The Living History Project | CreepCast

(upbeat music) Welcome back to Creep Guest. Today we are in a paranormal hot spot in the basement of the Sally House. We're gonna be doing a little grab bag of sorts today, starting off with the portraits, which is AK, the cabin of the woods, which is apparently a classic that you read. - OG, got posted right on the day. - Back and everywhere back in the day. We're also gonna cover the bath game, and then we're gonna go into our stories of the day, which is an empty prison and an ending on, my students submitted the most disturbing living history project I've ever seen. Pretty excited. Before we get into it, I just wanna say, thank you to Spotify and Apple Podcast listeners, and of course to our beautiful patrons for making it possible for us to be here and be tormented. I'm almost positive that there is a possum in this hole in the wall over there, and it's scary. - Yeah, so for those who didn't watch the last episode or have ever been able to go, I don't know how these things get edited, we are inside of the Sally House in what's the town's name? - Atchinson, Kansas. - Atchinson, Kansas. This house is regarded as being one of the most haunted houses in America, as legend has it back in the 1800s, the spacement that we are in now was used as a makeshift hospital for hospitals in the region. One day, a little girl named Sally came here with stomach pains and tragically died on the table during an appendectomy. - I had an appendectomy. - Yeah, but you're alive. - Well, but I was just saying, I don't know if you can see it, but can you see my appendix score in the infrared? - Yeah, you can. - It's pretty cool. - But you lived. - Well, I guess what I don't know. - So Isaiah, what I'm saying is, she's jealous. - Yeah, if the ghost is gonna get anyone, it's you. - Because you live here. - I don't have an appendix for her to take. I mean, it's gone. - It's jealousy. - Oh. - We're also talking about like an eight-year-old child. - Oh, I mean, she's 100. She's over 100 years old now. - Oh, sure, she's pretty old by now. - Hopefully by this time, she's learned a little bit of compassion. - She's doing a bit of perspective, perhaps. - Also, this place has been, you know, it's been a little spooky. I will say the spookiest thing happened so far is the door-dash driver that dropped off her taco bell for the last episode, which it was delicious. I wish I had another breeder now, was they wouldn't even drop the food off here. - They knocked on the door and then they ran to the corner of the street. And then they had to, here we go out and find him because he's like, I'm not standing at the door. - Yeah. - That's how freaked out people are of this house. Which I will say, there's been some pretty creepy stuff. If you are, we're putting it on the Patreon, right? Our vlog of vlogging through the house and talking about it and all that stuff. - This is on the town as well. I'm visiting the town and stuff like that. There is a lot of weird stuff in the house. People have dreams of like dead children. There is a room where people come and leave toys for Sally and stuff like that where we recorded the last episode. Very creepy. So now we are in the dark, very dingy basement. - It is, the lights are all completely off. - The lights are all completely off. I can fill my throat closing up as I'm down here. Very much as this. As fast as the old is getting to me. - The open drywall here is very high sand. - There is a kid you're not. We were reading about this place that someone was kicked out because they tried to perform a ritual to summon BLs above. And you can see the mark in the floor. - Nick's sitting on it. Nick is sitting on the mark on the floor where they made the sigil to try to summon the devil. It's right there. So it's a very freaky place. There's also a giant hole in the wall that you can't see all the way back in. It like bows to the right. And they have. - It's fenced off. - It's fenced off. - Yeah. - They fenced off a hole in the wall. As if there's something back there. They're keeping in there. We keep hearing weird noises coming. - I'm almost 100% positive. It's either a door for it's a possum. Similar noises coming from. - Awesome. - Yes. - Yes, similar noises. - Probably not. - Similar noises coming from the hole. I don't know. But to start off, I'm going to read this. This is a very short story. I'm going to read it just in a minute. - I didn't. - The very. - Hold on, hold on. Can you also. - So before we start recording, I asked, or we could. - God, man, I'll tell you what, that was seriously. I might be able to take a break for a second. I, that Taco Bell is fucking running serious right now. - Oh my, I took a piss. I'll hold it, but I'll tell you. I like. - We did all this to set up the recording. - That devil. I didn't think about it. That double beef burrito with the potatoes added to it has fucking, it's like a. It's an actual spring trap on my stomach. - Okay. - Let me just, let me just get into the flow of it here. - Okay, hold on. Hold on. - All right. - Where the episode started, I kept asking, are we cool and you didn't answer me. - What do you mean, what are we cool? About what? - Like, is the show cool? Are we cool? - No, this, no. God, no. Are you fucking kidding me? No. Have you seen all the YouTube videos people doing this shit? No, it's fucking cringe. We're cringe. But we're reading cringe. You see, it works because we're reading cringy stories at a haunted house. I mean, like, it's cohesive. God. All right. Well, this first one's called The Portraits, aka Cabin in the Woods. Isaiah, you've read this one? - Yeah. - Okay, well, here we go. Here we go. I'm gonna read it first. Look, I didn't get any of that Diablo sauce. I was asking for it too, wasn't I? So he was like, I'm lucky. I'm lucky, I'm lucky. I approached that bitch for all, because I'd tell you that was. If I would have had some Diablo sauce on that, it would be a different ballgame right now. Holy hill. Okay. There was a hunter in the woods. Who, after a long day hunting, was in the middle of an immense forest. It was getting dark. And having lost his bearings, he decided to head in one direction until he was clear of the increasingly oppressive foliage. After what seemed like hours, he came across a cabin in a small clearing. Realizing how dark it had grown, he decided to see if he could stay there for the night. He approached and found the door jar. Nobody was inside. The hunter flopped down on the single bed, deciding to explain himself to the owner in the morning as he looked around. He was surprised to see the walls are dorned by many portraits, all painted in incredible detail, without exception. They appeared to. - I heard that. - That was something new, you know? - Yeah. - Do you have that flashlight? - Nick, why do you have to say it like that? - What do you mean? - It's like, it's just such a fucking, it's immediate like accepting defeat. (laughing) - God. - The way Nick said that was very. - Yeah. - Yeah. - We're dead. (laughing) - There's a metal pipe right here and I may or may not have found it. - Oh, okay. - Me and Walt Nick's. - Yeah. Me and Walt Nick's over here like, don't worry everyone. - Yeah. - God is coming. - Yeah. - Without exception. - They appeared to be staring down at him. Their features twisted into the looks of hatred. Staring back, he grew increasingly uncomfortable. Making a concerted effort to ignore the many hateful faces, he turned to face the wall. And exhausted, he fell into a restless sleep. Face down in an unfamiliar bed. He turned blinking in an unexpected sunlight. Looking up, he discovered that the cabin had no portraits. Only windows. - That's fun. People looking at him in the dark, I mean, how cool is that? And see, you know what's fucked up is out now with that bang, Nick just immediately accepted fucking defeat that we're gonna die. Now I just expect it in there. I'm like, I'm not even joking, I keep looking over there and I keep feeling like I see some kind of fucking figure in the show. - So I'm not gonna lie. - Shut up. Don't even say fucking anything. Did you see something back there? - I'm not gonna, he's talking to shut up. - I'm not gonna say fucking anything. I'm saying that I don't even know what I saw. - I'm just, so guys, I really can't, we need to put a picture on screen. I can't explain to you how much of a death dungeon this thing looks like. - Yeah, we have to put, all right, so I actually have to quit looking at it because I keep looking at this one spot. - Shut the fuck up. - Shut the fuck up right now. - Someone get a flashlight right now and shine it into that hole in the wall. - What do you mean you didn't, okay. - All right, I'm getting a little. - Okay. - You guys are spooking me out in. - I'm fucking freaking yourself out. - Okay, so I'm scared. - There's about to be a flashlight to dispel this but I'm looking at that top right corner and I swear I keep seeing. - Dude, shut the fuck up. - I keep seeing this. Here's the wall I keep seeing. - Stop it. - You're fucking with me. - I swear the longer I look, it's like uh, uh, uh, uh. So I just need your shine a light so I know it's my eyes playing. - What the fuck are we gonna, I mean what are we gonna do? - Yeah. - It's just like a Middle Eastern man down here. - No. - You know what it is? Okay, do you see how from here, you can see that brick a little bit back on this wall. - Oh my god, that mound of dirt. - This is a start of a horror movie. It's like the hole. - What, what the fuck are we doing? (laughing) - Shut the fuck up. - Yeah, so that brick that's in the top right, from right here, it is right on the precipice being too dark to see. - I know what you mean. - So it's showing and going away. - It looks like it's moving. - It's horrible. - So when you move your perspective, - Yes. - And it's like, it's a fucking illusion. - It's an illusion, it's horrible. - Oh, it's a fireplace. - Okay. All right, so that's, wait, so, you know what I thought it was, I thought this was like a, who's the fucking fat little girl that goes to the bear's house? - Right. - A little red riding hood. - No, no, no, that's the wolf, that's the wolf, yeah. - Goldilocks, I thought it was that vibe per second. - Yeah. - The whole idea though of all the faces, look, that's fun. - Yeah, well, this used to get passed around all the time. And it'd be like, it'd be a company with images like scary portraits and stuff like that or like an empty woods. - Is it not a Grim's fairy tale? It has such a vibe. - I mean, it has a tone. related to it but I don't think it's literally a Grim's fairy tale. I remember this getting passed around the time that like the stairs in the woods were popular and stuff like that. You come across weird structures out in the woods. What do they mean? What could it be about? And I like the idea that this cabin is like an open door for anyone to come land but then they're watched for some reason. And it's also just a great zinger on the end. Oh it's great. I mean my god was it even a minute long besides my dyslexia? I mean that would have been a 30 second raid. Well it's a very powerful little kick. I read that one. Here you put in here the bath game. Do you want to do you want to read the bath game and explain what it is? Let's do the bath game. So the bath game we did a video at one point when we it's the one we did the bring her back gray water in the gray water video we covered a series of ritual creepypastas where it's like you perform some action and then like a thing like the midnight game and stuff like that. So the bath game's one of those and given that we are in a house with a spirit that keeps showing up through the wall over there. This one's about somebody in a spirit. Did you hear it cat me out? Right now? Yeah. No. Earlier? Yes. You heard one earlier but not right now. Right now. You heard a cat me out earlier? Are you fucking why didn't you say anything? Why do I hear it right now? Just a cat. Nick you're setting on a satanic sigil. No, no, no, no, no, no, I think you're in the girm the creakiest fucking chair and no no man. And then you keep shifting back and forth and you keep saying you're just a cat. You say fuck. Also I think my foot swollen from the being so asleep. There's going to be a giant hand reached down and just let me through the floor. I don't like that. Yeah, I wouldn't like it either, Nick. I don't like that. I don't, I, oh, I'd say it's dead. I don't like that. That's a bummer. The bath game. The bath game formerly known as the rumour sand. What the fuck does that mean? Holy shit. That's a little weird tone I approach that way. Formerly known as Daruma sand, this, this bitch comes from overseas. Daruma. What was Daruma be? Aruba Jamaica. Daruba Islamic. Daruma. Daruma is Islamic. No, it isn't. This isn't an Islamic bath game. No. Are you fucking? I can barely see your face. You cocksucker. I'm telling you. You're freaking out. Right. He's just always seeing the, always see the darkest just. Why? I'm just looking at your smile at me. Bath game formerly known as Daruma sand. It's an old game surrounding a ghost from a bathtub that follows you all day. Land a room of sand can result in bad things happening to you. Even death. That's gonna fun. It's like it's not even, you might not even get killed, but it still looks like it could. It could? You never know. Yeah. Things that you will need. A bathroom with a bathtub. He's figured now. Starting the game. Step one. Before you go to bed, take off all your clothes. All right. Step two. End of the bathroom. Fill up the bathtub and turn out all the lights. Step three. Sit in the middle of the tub while facing the faucet. Tap. Close your eyes. Wash your hair. Step four. As you wash your hair, you should repeat these words. Japanese hollow round paper mishae doll. Nick, why'd you say it was Islamic? It's the founder of Zen Buddhism. Oh my god. You say that's my bad. That's my bad. That's my bad. All right. Hi, Basha. Nick sitting in his room like the turban in the prayer mat. Yeah, don't shit. My go-to. That's not someone coming on the pop of me video. Anytime Nick speaks, I have to get ready. Step four. Do not stop repeating this until you finish washing your hair. Your eyes must remain shut. Step five. As you wash your hair, you will picture a Japanese woman standing in the bathtub. You will slip and fall into a rusty tap, gouging her eye out, killing her. Jesus. Step six. You will hear a sound coming from behind you or feel a movement in the bath. Do not turn around or peek. You will finally summon the ghost. You will feel her presence as she emerges out of the bathtub. Ask out loud. Why'd you fall in the bathtub? Step seven. You can. the way you said that was very accusatory. You know, idiot. Step seven. You can finally get out of the bathtub and make sure your eyes remain shut. Make sure not to slip or trip. You get out of the bath. Not during the water until the next morning. Step eight. Shot the door behind you. Now safe to open your eyes. Keep the water in the bathtub until morning. Do not turn any lights on. Go to bed. The woman is a ghostly figure that will follow you all day. He wears a tattered and stained white clothes with black hair. She has only one eye. Your left eye is wide open and blood shot. Her right eye is missing. I was leaving bloody hollow eye socket. When you wake up in the morning, the game will begin. Your day will begin normal until you will feel the presence of the one-eyed woman glancing over your right shoulder. When you turn around, she will not be there. She will get closer and closer as your day goes on. Not let her catch you. If the one-eyed woman is getting too close, you should shout "Tomere!" Which means "Stop!" Then run away fast. This will put distance between you and the woman. It was in this game before midnight or else she will keep stalking you and appearing your dreams to kill you. In the game, you must catch a glimpse of the one-eyed woman and shout "Kira!" Which means "I cut you loose." While swinging your arm in a chopping motion, the game will end. One-eyed woman won't follow you anymore. We'll number one. Do not open your eyes when the ghost first appears. We'll number two. Not let the one-eyed woman trip you when you leave the bathtub. We'll number three. Do not re-enter the bathroom after you leave. We'll number four. Not drain the bath until morning. We'll number five. Not let the one-eyed woman catch you. This game is very dangerous. It can get you killed when you get out of the bathtub. Very important to play with caution. What a fucking demented, fucking Japanese game that is, huh? Well, yeah, it is like if you want to touch the supernatural and like. There ain't no fucking touch in your. You basically make it. You make a Japanese pirate that follows you around all day. You know who it would. You wouldn't even nightmares, Ms. Watson. Gosh, you're in. Gosh, you're in one, Ms. Watson. When you put it like that. Also, this literally does sound like a pervert's fantasy of like. Yeah, take your clothes off. Also, be sure to take your clothes off. Wash your hair very rapidly but don't open your eyes and then also don't drain the water till morning. What the fuck do you think they're doing without water? I think the implication is you're mimicking the steps of the woman. If you're hearing a. He was taking a shower and fell and died and the water stayed until someone found her the next morning. If you hear somebody. If you hear somebody drinking the bathtub water with a straw, don't look. It kind of. Yeah, then y'all. Torama. It's a keyritoriama. There's one face. An image that gets passed around online is a scary image that I think might actually be related to this story. Yeah, I can't find the image right now. I was just pulling up like stuff from the crudge, which is what I'm looking for. But there's this image that goes around online that I think only has one eye. I think might have come for this, but the image is often detached from the story. If I can find it in post, we'll show it. But I think that stories like this are for people that. I can see it working with the narrative, like the character we just read about in our last story at Infinim, where someone who is at the end of the rope needs something, needs to change something, and it's like, what have I got to lose? Kind of thing, right? I could see them doing a game like this to touch the other side to see what's beyond the veil sort of. When I said, look over to your right shoulder, I fucking did it, and I scared the fuck out of myself. What'd you look at? I looked at it well, there's just a. There's a silver handle there, but I thought it was eyes. Excuse me. Can I just find this one? But anyway, we can go on. But what do you think of that? What do you think of the ritual games? I mean, I like the idea because this was like a fan fiction before the internet to me. This is like what those kinds of people did before the internet existed, or whatever. I'm just being like, it's just people being like, isn't this cool? Like that kind of thing. What have that mindset? It doesn't make a lot of sense what I'm saying, but I'm just. I have an urban legend. They're just saying like that kind of person that would be like, you know, like I someone who's like obsessed with. What's a. What's a popular show? Super natural. Really? Why don't you just say monk while you're at it, dude? You know what? Never fucking monk. I don't know, it's fun. They're fun. But at the same time, I'm just like, what kind of fucking psychopath would do God, see you this dude. God, see you. Supernatural shut the five never heard you once say that for you what's a private show? You want to know some horrible information, uh, what it surprised you to know I used to be super into super natural It's a good it's a good show. I'm not saying it's I'm not saying that the show is not good I'm just a funny thing to write like you could have said the sopranos or any there like I don't know anything that isn't super natural All right, well, should we get into empty prison? Yeah, let's start actually reading a story. Let's sit on We're This is short bug how long have we been recording so far 24 minutes? Half an hour. We have a red one story Red - thank you very much That's not how you've basically heard me have a seizure and then I got yeah, tripped up over a Japanese pirate also once again I cannot I feel like I hear something in the hole and I cannot stress that enough You're probably hearing my foot because there's like dirt where I am I don't know Trevor's trying to calm your nerves You are directly in line with the whole Why would you say that? It's so cool. Yeah, that should be the follow super natural Your eyes right in front of the hole super natural I want to take a moment to think today's sponsor cash app cash app is here to work for you So that you can earn more money and then spend it on what you want to spend it on that means more money in your pocket And maybe more books on your shelf or more movies in the cabinet or whatever God's earth hunter spends his money on cash app can do way more than you think and make your money work for you if you direct deposit at least $300 in paychecks each month and use the cash app card for purchases You can earn interest on your savings no minimum fees no minimum balance requirements Spending money can help you save money also you can hit your savings goals even faster by turning on roundups on your cash app Card with roundups every purchase you make is rounded up to the nearest dollar and that remainder amount is put back into your Savings and as mentioned those savings can earn you money when you use a cash app card So for just a few cents that you probably don't even think about at the time of purchase It can work for you over time. Don't let your money just set around and gather dust make it work for you Take advantage of interest savings on cash app today now it's the perfect time because new cash app customers can earn $100 if they use code cash app 10 in their profile it's sign up and send $5 to a friend within 14 days Terms apply. That's right Decided to link in the description and use code cash app 10 and if you're gonna send $5 to someone anyway might as well get $10 back for it Cash app is a financial service platform not a bank cash app. He's a debit flex cards issue by Sunbank member FDC and the bank or bank In a pursuant to a license from BSA corporates each of the conditions for the Sun free bank card Set a debit flex card and bank or debit flex card cash app green features savings for a deposit roundups overdraft coverage and discount provided by cash app of locking brand Barrow cash back offers and visit cash off app slash legal slash podcast for full disclosures Thank you cash app for sponsoring the show the link to be in the description. We are back to the episode Support for today's episode comes from square system that fixes one of the biggest headaches and running a business Starting a business is exciting, but running it can be complicated Jubilee payments inventory staff scheduling online orders our reports square brings all that into one place No matter the business square helps things go smoothly. I love going to coffee shops and restaurants that you square because it makes everything go smoothly Process is quick and streamlined and it means I'm never waiting too long for my order Am I personally used like using square when I'm booing at cons and you can preload the items with their prices So everything is a quick tap away plus a square you get real-time reports on what you're selling to easily track growth and identify when you need to Restock on fan favorites with square. There's three clever plans and never any hidden fees If you're starting a business or running one that deserves better tools square helps you sell message and grow without slowing down Right now you can get $200 off square hardware at square dot com slash GP slash creep cast. That's S Q A R E dot com slash G O slash Creepcast run your business smarter with square get started today All right empty prison. Yeah, let's do it by imp by M59 car. Yes, so do you remember what story of his week read before? No, no, dude Of course not what are you done feed isn't that you want to guess M59 car. Yeah, we liked it. We liked it a lot. Can you give me a hint of what it was? It's an abacement It wasn't is that really is the basement story? I'm kind of Is it a recluse is it the one where it's the guy is stuck in his apartment or whatever? Not not the one we read recently about the pill that keeps no, no, no I'm talking about the one where it's like a guy's isolated. He is like looking to the little hole Yeah, yeah, and he thinks that everyone's been turned into aliens. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's him psychosis is the name of psychosis There you go. So M59 car wrote that okay, he's read a bunch of other stuff too Among after we read psychosis for creep cast a bunch of people recommended this one as a follow-up Amulis you said among among Amulgas is that still pop up? Nothing would make me happier could that get you could that get you pussy now you think like is it nothing would make me happier Yeah, then it's something a retro meme if something flew out of that fence at a hundred miles now or directly into you I don't think so If you're good enough looking guy and you're going to it's like a 28 year old girl. You probably could say mogas and get you All right, that's probably true. They probably think you're saying it's ironic. What do you think about amogas? You're horrible. You're actually you're a Magus super natural Say mogas. Oh, please fuck me Okay, please split me open Is that have you on I have you on a rocket said I'm on this to a girl before no, no You Detail yeah, but that's not me never me I'm just the little guy What are you looking up like this? Like a bunch. Yeah, I'm trying to find this one image god. Just look We read an empty prison is this freaking your out? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's a ring that just gate one He's gonna ask jeez. What are you doing with that? Cool. Yeah, being safe. Sure. All right An empty prison, but what's the actual name of Matt Demirsky Matt Demirsky's an empty prison Matt Demirsky sounds like a hockey player Single day added on to my sins met the difference between the normal jail and unindie nightmare. Hold on a second Nick. What are you doing? He little goblin. He's fucking getting him. Where are you going near the gate? I was checking on the camera. Okay Go ahead just stands up randomly walk up to the Hold this really he's he literally sat there. I sit there and I look at he's just like He like crawls off it's a fucking scary thing and he's in the creakiest oldest Polish chair. They could find on Something that's been well said was as a demonic Hello, Georgie. All right empty prison. Come on. Let's get it. No more mess around seriously A single day added on to my sentence met the difference between the normal jail and the unindie nightmare been being a prison I was supposed to get 364 days. That was the deal The judge didn't like my attitude whatever the hell that meant so he made it 365 Boom one year was the minimum for prison My lawyer made a stink in a half, but didn't do any good It's on his fault back. He's the one who's going to release this statement to the press or leak it online if the guardian corrections group GCG tries to get an injunction on us People have to know what happened. I've been being a prison I'm gonna put it right out there and tell you that it was haunted You think I'm joking knots or line, but you have no idea Haunted prisons aren't anything like you imagine those places that advertise themselves and give people tours or sick jokes compared to the real thing It got so bad that you can actually look up GCG's official filings for chapter 11 That shit put them out of business on their very first prison and right there on the briefs using an early statute of North Dakota law from 1857 to file an insurance claim it says Site of Fambina prison confirmed by governor's office and two notary publics witnessing in person to be afflicted by the supernatural Such that continued business is impossible Don't yeah, I okay what like I want to say I'm not gonna say it say it. No, I'm this is a show and you have to I don't give a fuck if it's a show Fuck them fuck you. I'm not saying it is a horror podcast. Give me something. I'm afraid Why are you doing that? No, it actually made me mad just then I got Nick. Nick got scared But the way he got scared When he got scared and I'm not kidding. I saw him he went It's like Freddie Mercury's demon, good back demon. Well, that was the possum getting in the vent or something. I'm sorry, did the ghost of my grandfather just show up in the room with that? Oh my god. The skeleton. The setting, it's fucked up because it's just like, I'll tell you it's a haunting. And I just like, you kind of like settle it in, but then I just keep like, we're in a very scary area right now. I keep getting in my head about it. What did you see over there that freaked you out? Okay. So this was too bright. And then I like, you know, the image, yeah, so I go about that and it looked like a white bald head. Yeah. In there. That's what I keep seeing out of that right corner. Yeah. That's the demon. Shut the fuck up, maybe the possums get into the bands. Oh my god, let's just fucking keep reading, I'm going to keep reading any more comments from the peanut gallery before we continue. Inside of Fambina prison confirmed by governor's office and two notary publics witnessing in person to be afflicted by the supernatural such that continued business is impossible. It wasn't the first time the prison was closed for that reason either. The leeches kept buying it and reopening it, hoping to make a buck off the common man. And I was shoved into that hellhole, without knowing the history, even a single bit. Don't get me wrong, the building itself wasn't so bad, especially for something straight out of 1853. It was a big stone cube that was squat heavy and cramped, but way less sealed off the modern prisons. We could see a lot of the cells around us. There was only one main hallway per floor and we were close enough to pass things between the bars and have some real human interaction. Good of him worse. There were five floors in capacity for 500 prisoners. When I first got there, I had a bunch of cellmates and I heard there were 2,000 guys locked up. I believed it, but that soon changed. I didn't talk to anyone for the first 3 weeks, never been a real prison before, and I was messed up over it. I didn't want to accept that I would be in that place and stuck with 3 other guys in myself for an entire year. The whole prison seemed full of feral men. Bottom floor would start screaming and hollering and panicking in the middle of the night all at once. We were on the top floor, but we could hear their screams echoing through the open old layout right there with us. Just thought the prisoners on the bottom floor were all nuts until the guards weren't there to wake us up the first day of my 4th week. When I woke up in my corner without some asshole guard banging on the bars of our cell, I finally had to talk. I asked one of my cellmates, Dante, what was going on, and I'll never forget the fear in his voice as he said something that should have made us all incredibly happy. Prisoners were talking quietly between the cells and loudly between the floors through various whispers and shouts, but the most we could figure out was that something on the first floor and made them all quit and protest. Sure, must have been the crazy screaming like that during the night, right? Except none of us could get any word from the bottom floor, instead silent down there. The guys on the second called out for hours. Someone was down there, they said, because they could hear shuffling footsteps walking around at random so often, but whoever it was, never said a single word. That was the first time Dante mentioned the crazy stories from the first floor. He muttered that he hoped none of that was true, but when I asked about it, he just shook his head. We were a little worried as the day wore on and nobody came to let us out for breakfast, and then nobody came to let us out for lunch. The time we usually got to spend outside in the yard came and went, and people began getting restless. In the cell that were left, Dante's friend Will began telling guys to pass the word that we should all calm down and start sharing any food we had to hold away. I remember asking Dante, "Is it really that bad?" They've denied meals in yard time for a day or two before. But the other two guys in our cell didn't look convinced. One of them said, "But not like this, they made damn sure we knew what they did, they never just up and left." Someone handed us pieces of crusty old bread through the bars. Much appreciated. New guards didn't show up for work for another full day. We got plenty of yard time that day from these new guys, but they seemed more confused than us. We all watched from a distance as Will asked a guard about what happened. Our trucked. I don't know. G.C.G. was paying a premium for a fast tire, so I signed up. What about the prisoners on the first floor? We could still hear him shuffling around down there. We looked on the way out of the yard and we couldn't see anyone. Huh. No being there. They all got transferred. Transferred? The hell that mean? It means D.O.C.R. took him back, returned to state custody since the company couldn't handle him. That made sense. If the floor had been full of nut jobs, then North Dakota's first local private prison company hardly had the experience to handle them. But these new guys didn't even have the skills to handle us. There were half as many guards as before and they didn't know the routines or knew the dangerous ones were among us. As a result, they were distant, scared, and forceful. I'll accept one guy. Helen. Helen wasn't the first guard to treat us like human beings, but by then he was the only one around. Traded jokes on the yard, never hit us and looked just in the eyes when he talked. He went and found some paperwork to confirm the crazies had actually been transferred, but it took three months to get that info out of GCG. By the time he told us he'd heard back, he sort of forgot in the whole thing. Two nights later, maybe two hours passed lights out. Guys on the second floor, and screaming. One day, he left up and fell on one of our cellmates by accident before shouting, "Shit, shit, must be a fire!" Other guys in our row began banging on the bars and shouting for the guards, but the uniforms charged past and headed downstairs without talking to us. We could hear them shouting orders down below and then yelling and confusion. Prisoner screams were clear coming from the second. It sounded like they were terrified of something in particular wanted help. Thousands of gates being slammed and people running reached us after about 10 minutes of shouting, then it was silent. He sat in the dark waiting, listening, till morning. When the new shift came in, they were surprised and confused. Kellen came by to ask what had happened. We told him what we knew, but he'd shown up and found open gates in an empty second floor. There's no indication what had happened, but he promised to check with corporate and figure out if the absent prisoners all been rapidly transferred again. I'll take grip of the bars and make sure Kellen was looking at him. Please find out who the hell is walking around down there at night. Kellen blanked him. "I mean, I'm day shift, so I don't know what I can do, but what do you mean the prisoners are gone?" Kellen told him fiercely, quietly, but the guys in the third floor said they still hear someone. Maybe two or three of someone's shuffling their feet every hour, so till morning, I guess I could go look right now. Until they reached the bars and grabbed his uniform, something that's usually got us a beating. "Hare me! Do not go in that by yourself. Stay in the stairwell unless someone's with you." Kellen nodded fearfully. Looked like he finally understood how spooked we were. He waived another guard off, and on day let go. Nothing more came of it for a whole season. Night shift had quit, and more guards got hired at an even higher pay. Kellen did another uniform, scoped out the first two floors, but found nothing. And on day thought it was because they were looking during the day, but he wasn't about to ask or only friend to risk himself. It was maybe three months later. Yeah. I was halfway through my sentence, and I'd taken up drawing, so I had a pen and paper, and we woke up in the middle of the night, everyone on the third floor screaming an absolute panic. I do like this recurring thing. It's almost like water rising up through the other floors, and there's no, I mean it sounds like there's a cover-up with them saying everyone was transferred. But it's like there's this evil approaching getting closer. This time we were less scared during the event itself. We'll offer to guard racing past 500 bucks from his commissary account if the man would come back and tell them what was going on. I'll take a listen to Tentley, trying to hear individual screams from the third floor over everyone else's shouting and confusion. Down any words he thought he had heard. But I wrote down, "Jesus Christ, killing him, God, let us out." I'm coming this way. We weren't as scared when it was happening because we'd lived through it twice before, but this time, the long-term fear was much deeper. Now we knew for sure that it was going to happen again, and any prisoners that had the means began lawyering up and doing everything they could to transfer to other prisons, even if it meant worse conditions. Problem was, North Dakota prison system was already overflowing. which was the whole reason GCG got started in the first place, so every guy that got out meant it was that much harder for the rest of us. Both of our cellmates transferred giving us more space, so that was nice, but it was small consolation. Apparently, Word had started to spread on the outside, and GCG's solution, instead of paying the guards even more, was to stop having a night shift at all except for just one poor guy. Helen was a bit miffed, he hadn't gotten a raise out of the whole thing, but we started to believe us that something was going on. By then, he'd been around a while, and he knew we weren't bullshitters. Too many of the other prisoners had told him they'd heard something walking around the first, second, and third floors at random during the night. It was just a few steps, sometimes as many as 20, but it only happened every so often, and only once it had been long enough that you thought it'd stopped for good. One guy on the fourth floor said he'd heard a full run from one end of the third floor hallway to the other, clear enough that he expected a guard to come charging up the stairwell, nobody had appeared. Slid as wrist and got transferred out on medical leave the next day, so we took him serious. All that was enough to get Helen to start doing some research on the outside, came to us in the seven month of my sentence with a pale face. Side us at the bars, Will asked, "What's the word?" Helen seemed grim, on a bullshit out there, but this place has mentioned a lot. It's been closed before, but I keep getting stone wild when I ask for historical documents. The thing is, I don't think the prison itself is the problem. Get this. Hold out a note pad for reference. Two Canadian priests, father Norbert, Provincher, and Severe Dumlin visited Pembina in 1818 before it even had official township. It was back then when the Hudson's Bay Company was big around these parts. That's how long ago it was. Pembina was the biggest town in North Dakota then, so the trading post was full, so the priest chose to sleep outside by where the Pembina River meets the Red River. The folk tale has it that the vision of a rotting woman came in the night and stole Provincher's life. The two men bartered with her to split the remaining life between them, pretending both to live only 35 more years instead of the 70 severe had left. Severe got an extra month and 20 days as a gift from his friend for a sacrifice. He paused as if we might guess the obvious outcome. He both died 35 years later. A new Pembina prison had a horrible problem, but that didn't mean I had to believe everything. Let me guess. A month and 20 days apart. It's true, dude. The dates of death are right there on Wikipedia, but hit this. 35 years later after 1818 made their death year 1853, the year this prison was built. But the place they camped that night by the meetings of the rivers. I didn't know what it meant, but I was beginning to feel very uneasy. It's right here, isn't it? It was dead serious. I think there's some shit here. Ancient shit. As the guy I know, he's got chip of war relatives over at Turtle Mountain. They know the history of the Red River better than anyone else. He said his uncle told him never to sleep at the meeting of the Red River and the Pembina River. He said something lives here under the ground that awakens with the changing of the seasons. That's cool. That's pretty sick. Very nuts. I know we bring it up constantly, but final prayer. Yeah. Some great thing underground. Love it. It's like it's physically rising through the levels of the prison in people. Yeah. That's pretty cool. We were silent for a beat after that. It was folktale nonsense, but it was as good as theory as any. Whatever it was, it was going to come back and wasn't friendly. We'll talk to Kellen for another few minutes. Dante was silent. After he was gone, I asked him. What's wrong? He said on one of the now unused bunks and told me, "I got another five years in here and I got no money for a lawyer. You said this will be up before it reaches us and I'll be here alone." Will it? There's no way to be sure. It'll be back in two months for the fourth floor, and then three months after that for us, I can get out a week before. A day too late doesn't seem to be exact. Just look to the floor. What I mean is, I do hope you get out of here before it comes. I wasn't sure what else to say after that, so I just said in my corner like I always did. It wasn't too much after that that we heard GCG was going under. Mad rush of transfers pissed off the state and lost the company of vital contract for a second location. Investors had pulled out or something. The number of guards was cut and slashed. Kellen took a pay hit to stay on as the only guy left on the day shift. There's only two prisoners left on the fourth floor. Called the 20 of us remaining as the general week, we expected it to happen approached. I feel like I should stay late just to see what the hell is going to go on down here. But the former guards, I ask about it, I'll terrified his hell and refuse to talk. Some go violent just because I asked. It's cool. I got a kid at home, don't be here for it. 20 of us left on the fifth floor, set in ourselves once night fell. Brain and listening. Monday night, nothing happened. Two guys down below occasionally shouted up to us, everything was clear. Tuesday night, nothing happened. Train was growing though, and we could sometimes hear them breathing rapidly down there. We could only imagine the adrenaline rushing through them every minute until dawn. Wednesday night, nothing happened. Yet something had changed in the air. Prison was much quieter now. The 2000 men had become 22, and I thought I could feel a subtle sort of heartbeat in the air, pounding against reality, and like it was a thin sheet of paper. It's just your imagination. Investor Williams speak louder than that. Thursday night, that heartbeat became a feeling of footsteps approaching from great distance. Guys, we'll shout it for myself. You good down there? Still here, one responded from down below. But I can feel it. It's at the door. It's knocking. What the hell, that's supposed to mean. Man below did not respond. Friday night, that was the night it would happen. All day, the two guys on fourth pulled and clanged on their bars, begging to be light out. Kellan was torn. After two hours of listening to that pleading, he came up with an idea. He transferred both of them up to our floor. If Noah's on four, then we'll be safe, right? Out loud, we agreed, but we were kidding ourselves. And the night guard showed up, he freaked, took the two men back down, set out loud what we were all thinking. If Noah's on four, we'll just come right to five. We'll just come right to five and get us all. What the hell, was Kellan thinking? Look how they're so like assured this thing's going to happen because I was like, we got to feed them to it. He's too. Gotta go down there. We had to listen to hours of sobbing that evening. It was the hardest trial of my life. I wanted to call out to the night guard. I wanted to ask him to get those men out of there. But if I did, I knew whatever was coming and find all of us instead. The moment it happened, it was like a cold hand on my shoulder. What's going on down there? Nantes shouted. The man was not sobbing, called back. It's changing me. Well, the man did. What's happening? Tell us. It's red. Red. It's red. What's red? Will yelled insistently. God damn it, what's red? Stare down the hallway at the night guard, still listening with fear. The screaming began a few seconds later. This time, only one floor above. We could clearly hear their every word. The sobbing prisoner shrieked. The man who'd been communicating with us began incoherently raging with fear against his bars. Then, strangely, he stopped. The 20 of us clung to our bars, and they were able to help and able to flee. Many of us cried, but we were otherwise silent. Where the yell would be to drown out the last words of the men below. But, there were eerily quiet for nearly two hours. We waited and strained silence as random footsteps traversed the fourth floor every so often. What was happening? For the first time, victims of whatever was going on down below had chosen to be quiet instead of yelling for help. How would that make things different? Long last, the sobbing man broke the silence. Sound of clinging, echoed up to stairwell. The sobbing man said with terror. We were no longer silent. We echoed that sentiment loudly and repeatedly to the guard. Do something. Just stood there, literally quaking in his boots. We'll scream to them. Snap out of it. The other guards and prisoners got away. You can't do whatever it is. It won't follow you. If you let them out and leave, I shouted. They're going to die down there. Dante threw his shoe and the impact finally snapped the man out of his tear. Guard ran to the stairwell and descended. The first thing we heard him say was a taken back, sobbing man again. The other prisoner wasn't talking for some reason. It hears gasping tear, but that too went quiet. Then we heard a buzzer and all the gates on four slammed loudly open. Sounds of panting running and someone dragging something followed. The prison went silent. Just like that, we were alone again. The formerly crowded prison now felt terrifyingly large and empty with only twenty of us and no guards. That night, the unmistakable sound of footsteps echoed from down below. I counted time as best I could. Forty minutes. Someone took three steps out of a cell and into the hallway, hour and six minutes. Someone ran 10 steps along the hallway and stopped abruptly. 28 minutes, footsteps approached the stairwell but then turned into a cell and went silent. Thing was, whoever it was sounded barefoot, starting and stopping locations did not match. Where they ended, it's often nowhere near where they began again later. That's pretty. All the little clues we get to this thing is terrifying that we don't see it but we hear people talking about it. But I also love that like whatever happens to these people, they're moving somewhere down there but it's almost like they're floating in between locations or somewhere they're very quiet and they get loud and stuff. By the time Don came, we were scared into motionless terrified silence and it took Kellyn's arrival for us to begin stirring again. With GCG and bankruptcy court, we no longer had a night guard at all. If it came for us, there would be nobody to let us out of our cells like everyone else. We hardly talked, hardly ate. Each passing day was a grain of sand falling through an hourglass marking our executions. Our fellows began confessing to crimes they hadn't even committed just to get transferred to supermax out of state. The only option left. Well that, suicide attempts. One by one, Kellyn escorted or dragged guys out of our floor, 20 became 15 and 10. Then it was just me and Dante, with Will still in the cell to our left. Three of us in Kellyn, or men waiting for doom. We sat playing card games in the weeks leading up to it. It would be one full year for me in that place, but I could swear I'd spent a lifetime in that cell. I couldn't think, couldn't remember life before. Couldn't imagine surviving after. Every day, I prayed for a transfer to come in, but North Dakota had gotten sick of our shed. The judges had stopped hearing cases from him being a prison. They didn't know there were only three of us left. Nobody knew. Contacted the media, we found the governor's office, we made a ruckus. That was worse than nobody knowing. Turned out, nobody cared. Two, there was nobody higher up at the GCG following the situation, and Kellyn couldn't get anybody on the phone. Payroll, meaning just his paycheck, was being handled by a third party disbursement company that couldn't answer questions about ongoing proceedings. A week approached. A Monday night, nothing happened. We were like statues in our cells, alone waiting for a sign of the executioner's approach. When dawn came, we sighed and began moving again. Dante asked, "You get out on Friday?" And nodded, "Things went like before. I'd be released the day of." As long as I left before sundown, it'd be all right. Two for two, one more, one more day. Set through the darkness until. No. The feeling of the prison had changed around us. A subtle heartbeat seemed to pulse against our faces and ears and eyes. It had come a day earlier in the week than the last time. That morning, Will Pat and my arms who both leaned out the bars. "Sorry, man." Dante just shook his head angrily. "I wasn't going to get out on time." On Wednesday night, the heartbeat became the sound of footsteps approaching some unfathomable distance. I think I stood at the bars of our cells that entire day. Bingers wrapped around metal with force to match the tension in the air and in our minds. This couldn't happen. This wouldn't happen. My lawyer would walk in and tell me he'd gotten the judge's unfair addition of an extra day removed. One day, one damn day. Even if I'd spent the whole year in this prison, one day still meant life or death. "Let me out! Let me the hell out for God's sake!" Nobody cared. Nobody would listen. I'd like to tell you that Kellen stayed late that night. I'd like to tell you that when the entire floor began to glow red, always the cells, the stone itself, as whatever ungodly abomination in the earth began to wake upon the changing of the season, as distant footsteps became a traveler at the door of our minds. I'd like to tell you that Kellen was there, hit the button, open the gates, and let us all out. I'd like to tell you that I didn't see anything that I'm not permanently a broken man. I didn't claw at the walls of my cell to approach slowly, moving a few steps every 20 to 70 minutes. I'd like to tell you that all three of us were able to run away, escape that horror upon reality that's rotting hands and blind eyes, radiating crimson light as it searched for us at random. But I can't give you a satisfying end to this story. The disbursement company fired Kellen and changed the locks on the property. Born into their paperwork, all the prisoners had been moved, and they thought he'd been getting paid for guarding an empty prison. They left us in there for 11 days before the air was found. We spent 11 nights with that big. For 11 days, we starved. For 11 nights, we sat absolutely still, not daring to move or breathe or even look left or right. New where we were, generally. So we'd right outside our cells for hours, sometimes walked right through the bars and grasped at the beds around us, daring us to make even the slightest motion. When you've spent six hours staring into the blind crimson eyes of our rotting demon, unable to blink your eyes for fear that it will hear the air your lashes move when you've seen what I've seen. The world's walked, reflected in hellish red. You'll understand. No one cares. I'd like to tell you that Kellen actually existed. I'd like to tell you we had a friend among the guards that wasn't all bad. I'd like to tell you I wasn't traumatized with a hell I went through being left rot and left to die as nothing more than a number on some corporation's books. But no one cares. End of story. That was fun. I like that one. That was a good one. That's a really cool idea that there's like a curse prison that this thing rises up through. I also like to mention the end of Kellen's not real. That's kind of just like, oh, this is how we found out our information, but that's not no one actually cared about us. There was no one there to help us out in the midst of this. Yeah. It was a really, I mean, like the buildup was really, really nice. Yeah, really fucking creepy. And it's like it's like prowling around this thing slowly moving, looking for people like it's come to collect its due of anyone who camps by the river in the prisoner's count as people that are camping. But it's slow and it takes its time to move and it can float around and stuff like that. I think that's really cool. Yeah, I think that like a really great payoff, great buildup to the same that I felt whenever we read a psychosis and stuff. Kind of like a weird conspiracy thing. Has there ever been like the GDC in this? You know, like in government documents, people say there's like, oh, there's aliens and stuff. Has there ever been anything with like paranormal stuff in official documents? I think so. Has there? Yeah. I didn't know much of stuff. Oh, I didn't know that. Well, you mean, what do you mean about paranormal stuff? Like investigation into the paranormal? Yes. Can the firm like ghost exist? No. Right, right, right. But there's stuff like, like I feel like I've got a bunch of the old CIA files. There was a ton of stuff back around like the 60s and 70s where they did experiments to try to understand if there was something to like telepathy. So they got like a bunch of professional telepathics and like had them conduct a bunch of experiments. They did a bunch of experiments with hallucinogenics to see if people were able to like astrally project and stuff like that. So there was one called Operation Sunbeam, I believe it was, where they gave people like LSD and stuff like that and they called it controlling where they would try to pilot where they were projecting themselves to. Is that what that movie, the "Menu Starrick Ghost" was based about? Not actually projecting like that, but it's a similar thing. That was during World War II, so that was OSS. That was like pre-experiments. But same idea. But there are some crazy stories from Operation Sunbeam where like people reported that they found the arc of the covenant in a cave in the Middle East and people who reported. What about the fucking Middle East giants or whatever? What the fuck was that about? Remember that one? Yeah, the Afghanistan giants. Yup, giants at Kandar, I think it was. Do people say is that like, is that a meme or is that like a. It comes from. So there's stories of biblical giants and stuff like that, which is my, you know, if you watch. I've made a bunch of videos and references to biblical giants and stuff like that. I think they're really interesting topic. But the rumor is that graves and like sites of them exist in the Middle East that have been covered up by like governments and there's been a bunch of political interests to try to keep information of them secret and that there's passageways in the mountains and like Iraq and Afghanistan leads down to places where they could still exist. So the story is, in 2012, I believe there was a group of Rangers who got into combat with something and a bunch of them were killed. And it's supposedly a cover-up that they were searching in caves for insurgents and ran into a giant that killed several of them until eventually the area was like blown to beds and then the whole thing kept hush. But the story is that a group of Army Rangers ran into a giant in Afghanistan. Interesting. So there's a, I mean, that's not an official document. That's more of like a fun conspiracy theory thing. But there are official documents with CIA and like MK Ultra, for example. Most of MK Ultra was if you could like change someone's mind and like make them into the perfect soldier through psychotropics and like breaking them down with drugs and stuff like that. And there was a bunch of stuff down there to see if it's like you could basically make people be telepathic. Part of MK Ultra was giving LSD to dolphins to see if they could learn to communicate with humans off of that. So yeah, they actually started speaking in a new like cadence that no other dolphins would amongst themselves. So it seems they did and create their own white communication with each other. - Oh the (beep) (laughing) - Yeah, we gotta believe that. - All right, so one final story tonight. - Yeah. - We're reading, "My Students Submitted the Most Disturbing Living History Project I've Ever Seen." And this is posted by Gretelcat. We haven't read anything from Gretelcat before. It looks like they only have two stories ever posted to no sleepers like eight and nine years ago. - Okay. - But this story has 24,000 upvotes. - Wow, okay, yeah. A bunch of people were super into this. So, seems they had a couple of bangers and then just dropped off their lips. - In the dip, I love when people do that. - So, we'll leave them linked in the description. Gretelcat, if you somehow watched this and you wanna make more stories, - Here's your audience. - Keep writing. - Keep writing. - But for now, into their story. One of my least favorite parts about being obviously everyone will be linked in the description. If you wanna support the artist, please do, they deserve it. - Right. - One of my least favorite parts about being a middle school history teacher is the bullshit living history assignments we give at the end of every school year. Kids are supposed to sit with their grandparents, videotape, voice record, or transcribe their oldest memories for posterity and for an easy way to bring up their GPA. I've been doing this for 17 years. And when I collected the projects this time around, I assumed they would be as dull if not duller than usual. This had not been a particularly bright class. So, I went home, boarded myself a class of wine and prepared for a long night of, I only owned two pairs of pants when I was your age. And my brother got beat with a newspaper for hitting a baseball into a neighbor's yard. And of course, these projects were peppered with innocent, old person comments that were so horribly sexist and racist you just had to laugh. Now, I had a girl in my class whom I will call Olivia. She was pudgy, quiet, and proved herself a consistent B student. I expected from Andrews dog in this game. (laughing) I expected her project to be as unremarkable as her. Would you consider that honest? - I mean, we're getting a little blown up now. - That's a little blown up now. - A little blown up now. (laughing) - Is that, how does, why did both of you turn and look at this act? - Oh, he looked and looked. - Look at what, you looked up there the next spun around in this chair really quick. - Oh, I didn't look up there. I was just looking at that light off the, it's from the deal. - I was just looking up there. - Oh, okay. - Also, how does that look? Did you turn your screen brightness up? - You can't even tell. - You can't really? - I don't know those. - I don't know this one. - Some of them, it keeps lowering, so I have to keep tapping it. - Okay. - I just look over, it looks like the spun around. - It's on to your face. - My bad. - I expected her project to be as unremarkable as her and perhaps that's why I was so profoundly disturbed but when I witnessed that night. Olivia had submitted two discs for some reason. So I began with the one marked interview. By screened hiccup twice before a grainy image of a living room came into view. The place was a hoarder's hell. Olivia was curled up in an armchair clutching a notebook and looking like a scared animal. Bross from her said a man with a somber countenance spoken to cigarette and staring at her expectantly. - Go ahead. - Woman's voice whispered from behind the camera. Olivia's out-ish eyes flash towards the screen back to the man. - I am here with my great uncle Stephen. - She began almost inaudibly. - He's going to tell us about his oldest memories from being in the army. - Great uncle Stephen looked like he'd rather be in the damn trench at the moment but he waited patiently for the questions to begin. Not surprisingly, Olivia read verbatim from the suggested question sheet I had handed out to the students. He answered her curtly. Once or twice I heard her mother whisper. - Speak up Olivia. - From behind the camera, difficult boring shit. So I was intrigued when Olivia said down the notebook and asked, - Did you like being in the army? - That was totally off-script. Great uncle Stephen admitted to chain smuggler's wheeze. - Nope. Going to get out of my town, though. - Where did you go? - Balkans. - Uh-huh. - I doubt you knew what the Balkans were. My suspicion was confirmed when she asked. - Was Balkus very different from here? - Yes. - I'm cleared to throw from behind the camera. Perhaps encouraging great uncle Stephen to be a little more forthcoming. But Olivia seemed genuinely interested. - Uncle Stephen, what is your very worst memory from the army? - I'm starting to see what she's been doing. (laughing) She chowin' down double stuff over here as well as she's asking questions. She's taking off tops and puttin' 'em together. - Quite a troupe of stuff, Uncle Stephen. Dippin' 'em in water, you're like, God. (laughing) - Water's favorite cookie. - Like it's a hot dog even in context. - Yeah, exactly. - That's not the saying. - Y'all man crushed his cigarette in the ass tree and then slowly lifted himself out of his chair. - I'll be back. - Camera cut off. Then the screen flashed back on. Everything was the same except great uncle Stephen had several pieces of paper and plastic sleeves laid it off to all the crap sitting on his coffee table. One, he held in his hand. - I was a kid when I was enlisted. - He said, looking at Olivia. - Your brother's age. - Olivia nodded. - I never saw combat, both of my deployments were to cities in Eastern Europe that had been destroyed by civil wars. Everything was a mess. I feel like a janitor's for a fuck's sake. - Great uncle Stephen sighed and looked at his paper. - My unit was assigned to a school that had been obliterated by all the violence. Broken windows, caved in rooms and for some reason the part that got me was the most was the school I'd been like this for years before we got there. No one had lifted a finger to fix it. I saw kids walk by it on the way to go beg for money for whatever shit they did. - Hammer dipped towards the floor. I heard mom was for harshly a great uncle Stephen. I couldn't make out what she was saying that it wasn't hard to imagine. - You want me to have a goddamn story or not? - An embarking response. - Did you build, let me tell how I want it. - Mom, please stop interrupting. Are you presenting this in front of the class? - No mom, we're just handing into the teacher. - Observation of worship before. - Great uncle Stephen contributed helpfully. It wasn't a he as a matter of fact, but other than that statement was accurate. Camera was lifted and after a couple of blurry focus adjustments shot was the same as before. - I'm talking too much anyway. - I lifted the piece of paper in his hand close to his face. - In the basement, I found this letter. I didn't know what it said, but I had a buddy of my trains leading. So I'm gonna read it now. I'll tell you what I saw in the basement. - She'll ran down my spine. Mom zoomed in to great uncle Stephen in his letter. His pulsed hands trembled as he held up the paper. This is what he read. "Dear sir, I never loved my country. "So many of these skirmishes are born from patriotism. "A power struggle for the shards of a once great empire. "And I do not care what name my home has on a map. "It's fighting as senseless and I stay as far away "from it as I can. "It was not these attacks and disorganized violence. "It took the lives of my wife and child. "It was illness, mercifully, "and having quickly for the baby. "Not just suffered for longer. "Washington whore knowing I could do nothing for them. "My only solace is that I was there for them "every step of the way. "Stop going to work one day and no one came after me. "I doubt they noticed I was gone. "Since the school was simply across the field, "visible for my window, it would have been easy "to go for a few hours each day. "Come home quickly to care for them." What was the point? All I did was clean floors. I was as useless as the world as I was to my family. I tried to take knowledge of the hospital, but the journey was too long and taxing. I brought her home and she died that night. After nodging the baby, we're gone. Well, I don't remember much. I didn't leave my hovel. I really ate and slept. Not many times I've taken my own life, even though it was help paralyzed by my own helplessness. The one thing that kept me sane was my radio. Never turned it off once. Even though I didn't listen to the words being said, back, the channel I got the clearest was in English, I think. I don't speak a lick of, but the voices, the music, the true knowledge that life existed beyond this violent city sustained me. I have no idea how long passed before I saw the light of day again. I was dizzy from hunger. Finding food was my priority. My radio came with me, of course. As I first told myself up, it has gone everywhere with me. It talks to me as I sleep and as I wake. I don't know what it's saying, but now I would die without it. Once I had some water and food, it occurred to me that the only thing left to do was to go back to work. So I did. Following morning, I simply returned to the school where I was a janitor, got back to work. Nobody made a big deal out of it. Like I said, Naja had been sick a long time, and those who worked at the school knew it. I appreciate that no one had pestered me to come back to work during the hardest days of my life. Teachers never said much to me, but we smiled at each other in the halls, and that mutual respect was perhaps the reason I decided to come back at all. Place had gone to the dogs without me, so I simply grabbed my broom and rags from my closet, set to cleaning. Everyone is grateful to have me back, I know. And the best part is that nobody minds my radio. I bring it with me everywhere. Keep the voice. volume low enough not to disrupt the students. No one is ever complained, fact, I suspect they like it. Schoolhouse is not very big, but does require a lot of maintenance. Floors are always sticky and stained, so I spend most of my time mopping. Kids make messes. Yes, that's why I'm still in business. Sometimes I have to move things around to make sure I get every spot on the floor beautiful and clean, but I take pride in that. In the repairs, school always needs two knobs here and there, and I'm happy to help. Some days I'm reconstructing a desk that broke because I whistle along with the radio. Other times I handle more serious, structural issues. Days when I have work like this, I feel truly instrumental, like a cog in a larger machine. How could this school survive without me? It took me a long time, but I once again, know that I have a purpose. There's a ladder behind the school, and it's full of preserved food. I live with payment, and I'm allowed to take as much food as I need. That arrangement's fine. What would I do with money anyway? I used to bring the food back to my home, one filled away from the school, but when I started sleeping in the basement, I once seemed to notice. School is special to me, and I cannot leave it unguarded. When I'm besieged with memories of my wife and baby, I turn up to the volume on the radio to drown out such thoughts. Works for me every time, but this morning, because this morning, I woke up in dead silence. I frantically examined the radio to see what had happened. I honestly cannot tell how many days in a row I've been using it. It simply live out its life and die naturally. Spent the entire day trying to fix it. Most of the time I've been crying. I'm losing my mind without it. I've given myself until sundown. If I cannot fix it by then, I'm going to take my life. I'm riding this because the sunlight started to die and I know what my fate shall be. Not about taking one last walk to the halls of my school. Saying goodbye to the students and teachers. I know I will be missed, but I can not bring myself to leave this room. I cannot go anywhere knowing that my radio is dead in here. There are no more tears in me. Feels now like I can't catch my breath. I've omitted what little food I had in my stomach and I'm going dizzy again, like I did after Naja died. I'm not long for this world. But before I take my life, I've closed the door to this room and stuck a chair beneath the handle. See the only room in the basement and has a small basement that looks in just enough light for me to see what I'm doing. Anyone is kind enough to come looking for me. I should not be met with this gruesome sight. Perhaps they will see the doors blocked, smell my rotting body, simply forget I have very existed. I have placed my radio and this note outside the door. Kind sir, if you are reading this, I have one humble request. Please fix it. Save my radio. Did not deserve to die in it's sleep and I am ashamed I cannot revive it. Now I'm ready to join Naja, little little Milla Heaven. I hope this school can find another janitor who loves and cares for it the way I do. The door is now. I don't know if I forget my radio. Stay in a slough. When mom zoomed back out, Livia had tears in her eyes. Thank you for sharing Uncle Stephen. Mom said, her voice choked. I think we have enough. Wait. Livia churped. He said there's more room. What did you find? More great Uncle Stephen could open his mouth. The image disappeared. A jaw dropped. Was that it? But why did great Uncle Stephen see? I probably remembered that there was a second disc. It was almost unmarked but I hope to contain the rest of the interview. There was no video, only audio, voice started up, so Livia's. I'm his Gary. I'm sorry about my mom but she refused to record the rest of what my uncle was saying, but I asked him to continue to record the story as a voicemail on my phone. I remember you said earlier this year that history is written by the people who win wars. Selected in a breath and comments crying. I have a slip to the night since I finished this project, but you have to hear what my uncle has to say. Your tears in my eyes too. Sincereity of her words was beautiful. I was also flattered that she had remembered some trite phrase I threw around because it was what my history teacher said to me. Before I got too sappy over it, the audio began again. K-MOM's frustrated voice, heard her mother mumbles something and walk away. Livia and her uncle were alone, imagined her looking at him expectantly. That's pretty cool. I'll be honest, like the letter was cool and stuff and I'm like, where's this going? What's that get around to? That's a fun reveal. I like that. There was silence as I felt goose bumps on my arms. Images that came to my mind were almost too overwhelming to express, but great uncle Stephen put them into words effortlessly. Clearly, he had spent his whole life thinking about it. This man, Stanislav went to a van alive to fall into a park schoolhouse and cleaned up blood and rubble like it was spilled drinks and dust. He smiled at that body in the hallway and believed they were smiling back at him because they liked his radio. He moved around corpses so he could swim with the ground under them, the roof half collapsed so when it rained he must have gotten soaking wet but was so oblivious that he didn't even feel a thing. I could hear Olivia crying steadily. I found the laundry he was talking about and it was on paper because of food that probably tasted like shit, most of the stuff was naughty. Did you see the dead body? Yes, hanging from the ceiling, but still amazingly, lifelike, he wasn't running away this hadn't happened years ago. Did he look peaceful? Yes, supportive desperation in your voice. Couldn't tell you. The smoke was ranked in his face as blue and his eyes were bulging like this. Imagine him demonstrating. The radio. Our great Uncle Steve and take a long drag off his cigarette. It was all right and it was still on. That's fun. That's good. Wow. All right. So in the midst of it, about midway through I was kind of like where, you know, beautifully written story, but what's the catch for you? Yeah, it's like I was kind of waiting for a reveal. Yeah, wait for the shoot to fall or it's like, all right, I see it. Well done and stuff. But then with the school is destroyed, he was clean up the rubble and that last line radio was still on. It's like them. What was the switch that made him not see through the delusion? I mean, part of the delusion ended and there's so many different layers of stuff of a war torn person. I mean, like now, even the top comment talking about lost his family to illness, was that even true? Maybe who knows? Or me to take him? He could have been the war that took him. I don't know. Devastating. Yeah. Yeah. Two fucking amazing stories. Wow. And I really, really want to read another one of the other Gretelcat story immediately because that was a punch the fuck that one, that the ending of that was sick, that the radio was still on. Ah, that's so good. Yeah. It's like what? What did his mind construct to where he was in a normal school, but the radio quit working? When in reality, he was cleaning rubble and the radio was fine. Like what? What was he seen? What did reality look like to him because it just lets the viewer just run with it of like what the fuck happened? It's one of those things too that the author probably has such a clear picture on their head, but they just didn't. They just know not to like totally give it all to you, you know, because at level of mystery, I mean, you're in the same boat as the teacher. Also, what a fun premise too is a setup of like, oh, we do these stupid living history assignments of fucking it. It's just such a great setup. It's like, oh, this is dumb. And here we go to it again. Well, here's a weird one. I came across. Yeah. And even the stuff like the beginning where it says that his house looked like a hoarder, nast and stuff everywhere. There was so much little context you didn't get till the end, you know? And that line, she says where it's like, you can tell Uncle Sam, which is name is Uncle Sam. Yeah. But where she says, you can tell Uncle Sam had spent his life thinking about this question, you know, what did it? It's like, I don't know. The radio was still on. Like, that's haunted him. That gave sense. Yeah. I think two stories that were awesome for the setting, I mean, I will say the, the first story got me pretty scared and stuff. And I think that just a fucking eerie fun time was, I hope that it was, it was fun to watch as it was to be in here recording the shit because it was pretty crazy. But guys, this is our story. I also want to add real quick to give Gradle count another shout out. Remember I said she has one other story. Title of the one other story is the animals on my farm always kill the newborns. That's fun. Yeah. So I want to check it out sometime. Yeah. So Gradle cat. Maybe we can read it while you're in town. That'd be fun. Yeah. N59 Gar and then the other two stories of the bath one and the portraits one are. anonymous classics. So hopefully you all enjoyed two OGs, really original gaming and OG, and then two really good stories off notes. - No, it was a really fun episode. And honestly, it's been really fun recording in this house and stuff, fucking spooky. We'll have to do another one of these again. But until next time guys, thank you so much for those who are listening on Apple Podcast and Spotify, all that shit. Be sure to check these ones out in person because the visuals are a lot of fun. And also thank you to our patrons who support us and are bringing us together and you know, just have kept this ship afloat for a long time. So we do appreciate it. If you want some extra content, please check it out. Until next time guys, stay creped. Would you, so now that we've read the good stories, would you say we're cool? - No, it's still cringey. (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (soft piano music)