Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol, an
idea. The population of atheists in this country is going through the rule,
rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I tell the truth,
it's because I tell the truth, not because I put my hand on
a book and made a wish and working together for a more rational world.
Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness. Truth Usian wisdom
will come to you that way. Assume nothing, question everything, and start
thinking. This is the Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews. Don't Alcatraz
sell fourteen D. The cell, of course, is empty today. This
island prison was closed back in nineteen sixty three. Fourteen D was known as
the whole Isolation solitary Confinement. It was one of the loneliest places on earth,
except for the unfortunate view those who were not alone, who were locked
in that cage with a visitor unwelcome. Just imagine you are an inmate inside
those concrete walls. It's Alcatraz. After lights out. The guards have already
gone to sell or bed check the cold bars inclosing the increasingly cold isolation self
fourteen D. You are just another inmate trying to sleep somewhere down the row,
and then you hear this. As the story goes, one inmate was
given three years in the hole after trying to escape Rufus McCain. He begged
and pleaded to be housed elsewhere, anywhere but fourteen D. He pleaded and
petitioned the guards every day, please move me to another cell. And yet
this isolation chamber would be his prison within the prison for three years, over
one hundred and fifty weeks, one thousand days, roughly eight thousand hours of
night, with barely a wink of sleep. His only companion beyond the guards
was his unwelcome guest. After those three interminable years, he was finally released
from solitary, and the inmates would say Rufus McCain had become a shell of
a man. It was as if he had vacated his mind of everything,
just so we wouldn't have to think about what he had seen and heard and
felt, he wouldn't have to endure the horror any And yet horror would continue
to follow McCain. He would soon be killed by another inmate with a painter's
blade on the third of December nineteen forty Another monster in the halls of Alcatraz.
Why this place, Why this prison? Many believe that it's simply the
nature of human nature. If you're going to house some of the world's most
dangerous people, and, according to some reports, further punish all troublemakers with
no heat, no running water, no mattresses, and only holes in the
concrete for toilets, there is going to be unrest. The spirit of that
place will never be at peace, the physical and the extra natural world bleeding
into each other. Perhaps this explains the unwonted guest, the ghost, the
creature of fourteen D. Alcatraz today is for tourism, Yet even those who
visit say that they hear cell doors close when none are closing. They hear
laughing in empty halls, They feel unnatural chills in warm cells, and some
say they have heard disembodied screams, torment in isolation, the taunting of demons,
the open mouths and burning eyes of monsters, unknown echoes of those with
a life sentence which had become a death sentence within the tiny walls of fourteen
ind it's a long, long road trip through the state of Nevada. You've
been staring at the highway's white line for hours and hours until the car begins
to drift. You can't even keep your eyes open. It's been too long,
too late. It's time to pull over. You scan the horizon for
a motel sign anywhere of the head, and then finally there. It is
an oasis in a tiny town called Tonopah, almost halfway between Las Vegas and
Reno. But something is different about the motel sign out front. Filling the
top half of that sign is a painting, the painting of a clown.
Now it's at this moment that you consider sleeping in your car, but a
hidden force, maybe just curiosity, pushes you toward the entry door and into
the lobby. You are greeted by a life sized clown sitting in a chair.
All around it are dozens of other tiny figures in makeup and wigs.
The office is filled with painted eyes staring you down. Welcome vacancy. Your
room is waiting. This Jestures of horror House was inspired by a man and
collector named Clarence Davis. She had accumulated in his life no fewer than one
hundred and fifty clown dolls and statues, and after his death, his children,
Leona and Leroy Davis, wanted to preserve his memory, and so they
built their monuments in that twenty four hundred person town in Nevana. Back in
nineteen eighty five, they built the Clown Motel and oh yes, your room
has clowns, so many clowns. All thirty one rooms feature at least two
custom clown art pieces. Rooms one oh eight, one eleven, two ten,
and two fourteen. These rooms are said to be haunted. Many believe
that these are spirits who have walked to those rooms from the nearby old Tonopas
Cemetery, a grave site populated by so many silver mine workers who burned to
death in the Belmont mine fire of nineteen eleven. They died underground, they
were buried underground. But in those white painted, red nosed, big toothed,
long fingered statues, the dead can, for just a few moments and
the darkness of night, remember what it was like to be alive. And
there you are. You are tucked into bed with lights off, and only
the faint glow of the street sign grazing your curtain. That glow faintly reveals
the mural on the wall to your left, only three feet separating your bed
from the figure. A clown painted almost to the top of the ceiling,
taller than you, red hair, white shirt, yellow suspenders, squinting slits
for eyes resting deep within, a narrow head, and a smile that feels
like a threat. This clown is holding a red balloon. You turn your
head away. Was that a sound? You cover your eyes and the red
and white pillows. Did something just touch you? You turn on the television
to mask the loud silence. Are the eyes of the painted clown now pointed
there? Or there? Or back here? You get up and wash your
face in the sink. What was that in the mirror? You wander back
and click off the lamp. The shadows seem different, And then finally you
acknowledge your unwelcome guest with words spoken out loud. We're in this together.
I won't move if you won't. Good night until light. Let me rest
without fright, smile, but don't bite. Be my angel in white.
You know it's interesting to hear from those who stay at the clown Motel.
Some can't and won't remain in their rooms. Others are filled with wonder and
delight and a feeling of welcome. Many ask for one of the themed rooms,
the Friday, the Thirteenth Room, the Halloween Room, the Exorcist Room,
the It Room, and in all of the thirty one rooms, guests
have reported strange things, knocks on the door, voices in adjacent rooms not
occupied at the time, waking up to see newly carved scratches upon the wall,
laughing sounds from a spouse or partner, or child or friend still fast
asleep in their bed. Would you could you stay all night at the Cloud
Motel with the dolls and mannequins and signs and paintings, and a lobby filled
with over two thousand clown figures to greet you. It's not expensive if you
would like to find out. The cheapest room is eighty five dollars. The
most expensive is one hundred and fifty. Just remember when you log the number
of guests for your stay, expect one or two more or three or four,
and try not to run if you see a frown on your clown and
tike Anish by William Hughes Marns. Yesterday upon the stair, I met a
man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. I wish I wish
he'd go away. When I came home last night at three, the man
was waiting there for me, but when I looked around the hall, I
couldn't see him there at all. Go away, Go away. Don't you
come back anymore? Go away, go away, and please don't slam the
door. Last night I saw upon the stair a little man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today. Oh, how I wish he'd go away.
What I'm about to recount for you is absolutely true, And I'm not
saying that to try to build credibility or tension like this is a true story.
I mean, this actually happened, but I found it so chilling and
so compelling I wanted to include it here. It is the story of nineteen
year old Brandon Swanson. The date was May thirteenth, two thousand and eight.
Brandon was now with some friends at a party. They were celebrating the
end of the spring semester at Minnesota West Community and Technical College, and Brandon
had had a few drinks, but his buddy said he was not visibly intoxicated
by the time the party was winding down. This is just before midnight and
hopped in his car and began the thirty mile drive home. He still lived
with his parents, so that's thirty miles driving on rural Minnesota roads. Call
that forty five minutes or an hour long drive to arrive home at one am.
But it was two am when his parents, Brian and Annette Swanson,
at home asleep in their beds, received a phone call from Brandon. He
said he'd driven his Chevy Lumina off the road and into a ditch. He
couldn't get the car out, it was absolutely stuck. He was not injured,
but he was going to need his mom and dad to come pick him
up. And so Brian and Annette got in their pick up and they drove
in the middle of the night toward that spot where they estimated Brandon to be.
They kept their son on the phone. From time to time, the
call would drop out and he would call them or they would call him to
reconnect. Brandon flashed the headlight trying to signal them to bring them in.
They drove road after road, turn after turn, yet they never saw any
flashing headlights, and finally, after about forty minutes, Brandon got frustrated.
He looked off in the distance and saw some tiny lights and he thought those
might be the lights from a town called lynd l y in the lind And
he said, I'm going to walk toward Lynde. There's a bar on the
outside of town. I'm going to wait for you in the parking lot of
that bar. Picked me up there. Brandon kept mom and dad on the
cell phone as he walked toward what he thought was the town of lynd And.
It was between two thirty and three in the morning. As he had
been on the phone with his parents for forty seven minutes, she was saying
something. He all of a sudden interrupted himself with the words, oh shit,
and then went silence. There was no sound of a click or disconnect,
only silence, and his parents were saying, Brandon, Brandon, are
you there? Can you hear us say something? But no one said anything.
They disconnected that call and dialed him back immediately went to voicemail. His
father proceeded to the parking lot of that bar at lynd Brandon was not there.
They drove for miles on the roads all around Lynde. Brandon was not
there. They eventually did find the car. The Chevy was lodged in a
ditch just off of a road between the towns of Porter and Taunton, but
Brandon was not found. Brandon was never found. He was never seen again.
Had he mistaken some other kind of distant light for the town of Lynde
and somehow wandered into calamity. There was no sign of foul play at the
vehicle. Air surveillance teams eventually brought in. They found nothing. Search dogs
led officers roughly three miles away from the ditch to Yellow Medicine River. The
river was flowing fast and high after some heavy rains, and it was there
that the dogs lost the scent and teams walked up and down the river banks
four miles no sign. Cadaver dogs brought to the region. They searched for
three weeks. Nothing. Brandon Swanson had simply vanished into the rural farmlands and
back roads of Minnesota, and it's possible that his remains are out there somewhere.
Officials designated a one hundred and forty square mile grid for the search,
but there were some farmers who didn't want outsiders trampling onto their land during planting
and harvesting season, and for that reason, there are places that remain unchecked
to this day. It was not, and is not suspected that Brandon,
for some reason orchestrated his own disappearance, perhaps faking his own death. His
parents, extended family, and friends reported no signs of cognitive impairment, mental
illness, or even unhappiness at home. One night, he was simply there,
and then he was gone. It has been a decade and a half
and search teams working with the County Sheriff's Office will still go out today and
comb through the fields when harvesting season allows. Every once in a long while,
the tip line will ring. Those tips have not produced anything so far,
and to date, no physical evidence of Brandon has ever been found.
His cell phone, his car keys, remnants of clothing, nothing, absolutely
no trace at all. How and why did Brandon Swanson just vanish in the
middle of the night on the fourteenth of May two thousand and eight. This
remains a mystery unsolved, a tragedy unexplained, and a baffling true story.
For just a few minutes here, I want to talk a little bit about
fear. Fear has a name, it has many names, and it's possible
that one of these fears lurks behind your wide eyes and quivering lips. I
used to have this recurring dream when I was a teenager. Back then,
I was a night owl, so everybody else, mom and dad and my
sisters would go to bed well before me, and I would stay up.
I was watching television, or on the phone with my girlfriend or whatever,
and finally, when I got tired enough to go to sleep, it was
my job to make sure that the front and the back doors were locked.
Now do you ever have a strange dream and realize in the dream that you
are dreaming? Very often, I think it's this surreal stuff that tips you
off. Oh look, there is Taylor Swift and she's singing the Oscar Meyer
hot Dog jingle and she's sitting on a luck dragon that has the head of
al Pacino. That kind of thing you realize, Okay, I know I'm
in a dream. I realize that this is not real. But that was
not the case with my recurring dream. It felt absolutely authentic. Everything looked
and fell like real life. And so there I was, late at night,
my eyes getting so very heavy, and finally after midnight, I decided
it was time to call it a day, and so I got up,
and I did my routine. I went to the front door, and I
tugged on the door to make sure it was latched, and then I turned
the doorknob lock and the dead bolt. And after the front door, I
walked to the back of the house. But when I tugged on the back
door, it had not been latched, and that door swung in toward me
so quickly that it made me jump. And standing in that doorway was a
tall, looming figure cloaked in black. In the dream, I couldn't tell
if it was black fabric or just a person made of shadow. It was
so bizarre. His face was not covered. I I couldn't see a face,
though I couldn't see anything other than darkness. I couldn't even see his
eyes. He just stood there, filling that doorframe with his massive size.
And in that moment, I already knew he was coming inside my house.
He was coming after me. And it all happened so fast. It happened
in just a second, surprise and shock and panic, and I would wake
up in that same surprise and shock and panic, and often I couldn't get
back to sleep for a very long time. Did I have a condition called
celeerophobia, the irrational fear of a stranger in my house. I don't think
so. The idea hadn't really occurred to me during the day. It wasn't
something I thought about. But I will tell you this, After the first
two times I had that dream, locking the house in real life caused real
anxiety. Every time I walk toward that back door and tugged on it to
ensure that it was latched, I had a moment where I thought, there's
something on the other side. There are so many phobias in this world.
There is cholera phobia, the fear of clowns. I did an entire ghost
story about a clown on the podcast and in my ghost Stories audiobook. Today's
show has already featured the Clown Motel, and it's interesting to note how clowns
have become personal nightmares for so many. I always feel a little bit sad
for legitimate clown characters who only want to bring joy to parties and people,
you know, the party clown people who may not always feel the welcome they
deserve when they show up in a clown costume. Psychology Today says that chulaphobia
is the result of our brains fearing the unpredictable make up on the face,
strange paints on the smiles and cheeks and eyes. These make it difficult for
us to perceive true emotion sincere intent, the silly antics of the clowns seem
so unnatural to us, and so our brains trigger and we become suspicious.
It's all a facade. This is an act. There is another agenda.
For twelve percent of the population. Clowns are no laughing matter. Fear of
the dark nicktophobia. That's another common one. You ever walk upstairs after turning
off all the downstairs lights, and you'll walk those stairs really quickly to make
sure the boogeyman can't catch you. There is a terrifying Ryan Reynolds film released
back in twenty ten. The movie is called Buried. It is a survival
thriller that is very much not the usual comedy fair that we're used to seeing
from Ryan Reynolds. The entire movie takes place inside a coffin. Now Natalie
and I rented this movie shortly after it released. I am astounded that she
even made it through. After the first ten minutes, she was looking at
me going, I don't think I can do this. I don't think I
can do this, and yet somehow she persevered. Scientists know how the human
brain resists notions of prolonged suffering and dying alone. Skelephobia types would hate my
Halloween yard display, which is filled with plastic skeletons, Many people recoiling at
the very idea of anything looking dead or dying things. In fact, our
fears of death has a name thanatophobia. I recently found out that there is
a clinical name for the fear of Halloween, the October thirty first holiday,
Sowen of phobia. Now, remember that the Celtic New Year was long ago
marked by the festival of Sowen, at the celebration of the Harvest. The
Celts believed that this was a time when the supernatural plane and the physical world
almost merged together. There was a veil, a very thin veil, between
the living and the ghostly. That veil so thin that the dead could actually
slip into the physical world to walk among the living. Many people would anticipate
this, sometimes fearing this, they would leave gifts or treats for these spirits,
and, as some were mischievous and quite frightening, the goodies might distract
them or appease them and make them go away. Other people disguise themselves in
costumes so that dead relatives might simply walk gone by. Perhaps sauenophobia reflects that
aversion to anything death, or maybe as part of a highly Christian culture,
they're nervous about any ancient ritual involving spirits that does not exist in Christian doctrine
or tradition. Halloween has long been warned about by the Puritans, steeped in
Satanic panic. My own childhood was filled with horror stories about evil people out
there poisoning Halloween candy and putting razor blades inside apples, and stealing black cats
for the purpose of sacrifice, and even steep killing people, often children,
for the very same reason. It's ironic, then, that the word Halloween
is actually a Catholic invention. About twelve hundred years ago, after the Romans
had conquered the Celts, the Catholic Church was not pleased that so many of
the common people were enjoying these pagan festivals. Around six hundred CE, Pope
Gregory the First decided that rather than try to outlaw these godless traditions, the
Catholic Church would simply adopt them and modify them to religify them. Pagan ritual
would transform into Catholic ritual, Pagan temples could become Catholic temples. And three
hundred years after that, the Church moved its All Saints Day ritual from earlier
in the year to the first of November All Saints' Day, all Souls Day,
all Hallows Day, and as such, the day before November one,
which was of course October thirty first, well, that would become All Souls
Eve, All Hallows Eve. Halloween. One theory held by some historians says
that the Middle Ages saw the Church version of trick or treating. It was
called souling, where poor people would collect food and money from neighboring homes in
return for prayers for the dead, and yet the true spirits of Halloween would
simply not die. Those pumpkins with candles inside still echoed today that celt symbolism
of the magic of the sun over the harvest. In Ireland and Scotland,
carved vegetables were made to scare off a trickster named Stingy Jack, and thus
we got the jack O lantern. The colors of black and orange trace way
back to that ancient Sowin festival, black representing the death of summer, orange
representing the autumn harvest season. Oh, how could anyone be afraid of this
wonderful holiday? Today, the second most popular and profitable holiday after Christmas.
Apparently many people still are. Perhaps all they need is a smile and a
costume and a candle and a delicious treat to change their petrified perceptions. I
hope you feel the spirit of the season on our annual ghost Stories podcast as
we head toward the Halloween holiday. There are more stories to come next.
Halloween is upon us. It's ghost Stories twenty twenty three, and we're just
having some fun this week. Thank you so much for listening. And I
hear a lot of people. They send me emails and they're like, when's
ghost stories? We can't wait? And other people are like, Eh,
I'll see you later. Whatever, whatever, float your boat. But it's
fun for me. It's fun to be a storyteller in this way. And
Halloween's always blast. I've set a high bar in my neighborhood. It's either
a high bar or a low bar for Halloween decorations. And everybody else they've
got the little skull sitting on the porch, and they've got a couple of
hanging bats in the window, and maybe there's an inflatable something a pumpkin in
the front yard. Me I go down to Lowe's hardware store and I buy
some cheap lumber and silver spray paint, and I make another worldly prison.
Friend of mine bills an electric chair out of old pallide wood, and then
I enhanced it. So he brought me the chair. We brought it over
in his pickup truck and we put it in the yard and I'm like,
well, how can I make this look more elect And so I got these
what do you call the things that go on the end of the curtain rods,
finnyl finish, something like finyl or finil, maybe finial, I think,
And it was like six dollars finials, and you just screw them into
the top of the chair. And then I got a little piece of electrical
wire that comes out of a salad bowl. It's a salad bowl that is
the hat for my skeleton. And he's kind of charred looking and he's sitting
in there, but he's waving, so it's kind of a happy electric chair
scene. And then the rest of my crap, all my skeletons and lights.
I just sort of showered around it. But I mean it's pretty gaudy.
You can see my house from a block away, so I can't maybe
I'm bringing property values down. I don't really know, but you know,
it's just awesome. And of course we get ready for tons of trick or
treaters in this neighborhood, and a couple of friends of mine came up with
an interesting trick or treat tradition. They use the October thirty first holiday to
clear out the pantry in their kitchen. So they go through those shelves and
it's like, oh, this has been in here for two years or whatever.
I mean, nothing past the expiration, I guess. But oh look
it's Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup. We're not going to use that. Here's
some gravy packets, here's some spaghetti noodles, here's all this stuff, and
they grab they literally go through and sort of clear out the pantry. And
then for the trigger treaters, they give them a choice. The kids in
costumes come up, they romp up to the front door, ding dong trigg
or treat and everybody comes out and they have two piles and they say,
would you like a candy? Right, M and m's kitcat, snickers,
whatever, milky way, what's your favorite candy? Mine's peanut M and ms?
Okay, have peanut M and M, skit kats whatever, or you
can have something from our pantry pile. And according to my friends, more
kids get stuff out of the pantry pile, skipping the sweets. It's like,
oh, here's a box of maltomeal. Mom. They just put they
put regular food in the bags. Mom, I got a tiny plastic bottle
of garlic and onion powder. Kraft macaroni and cheese. Who could say no
to that? I actually think Kraft mac and cheese would be a great Halloween
trick or treat candy because it's almost, you know, it's kind of a
guilty pleasure. Some child walks up and it's like a bottle of olive oil.
Wow, thank you. They say the pantry pile is a big I
just think it's funny. I can't imagine, you know, gravy packets over
a KitKat. I can't imagine that, but I just found that a funny
story. Anyway, The rest of our actual ghost stories continue right now.
A Girl of Nails and Teeth by Hannah Yang. The girl trims her fingernails,
carefully, dropping each pale crescent into the glass jar in front of her.
Her mother stands next to her, watching, waiting. It's the middle
of summer, and the girl steams and the heat, anxious to finish her
task so she can go outside and play with the other girls in the neighborhood.
She can see them through the window, their shiny bikes prompt up against
the telephone pole, their laughter writing the wind like bird's song. Half her
mind is on the nail scissors, the other half on the laughing girls.
On the third finger of her left hand, she rushes cuts too close to
the quick blood beads up under her nail. The clipping falls to the hardwood
floor with a muted clink and scuttles under the couch. Sorry, she says,
sorry, sorry. Her mother gets down to her hands and knees to
look for it. She is no longer young, and the movement takes visible
effort. You're always so careless, she says, as she crawls. You're
old enough to know better. The girl sits on her chair enduring her mother's
quiet scolding, which ceases only when the lost nail clipping is recovered and dropped
safely in with the other. They have glass jars all around the house of
all different sizes, carefully labeled than stored. Jars of the girl's hair,
collected each time her mother gives her a haircut over the kitchen sink. Jars
of her blood from the phlebotomies her mother conducts once every six weeks, which
are followed by a carton of apple juice to restore the girl's blood sugar level.
Jars of shed skin she's peeled away from the pads of her thumbs that
callouses on her toes, the chapped layers of her lips. A jar of
all her baby teeth except for the one she accidentally swallowed while eating an ear
of corn, after which her mother pulled out the rest with pliers. Her
mother leaves the jars and plane sight to reassure herself of their progress. The
only occasion for which she puts the jars away is when someone comes to visit.
On those days, the girl and her mother pack everything into the pantry,
teeth buried inside sacks of rice, blood concealed behind cans of condensed soup.
Only after the jars are safely tucked away do they unlock the front door
and greet their neighbors with close lipped smiles, holding in all the things they
cannot say. Sometimes the other mothers burst into tears in the living room,
mourning what they have not yet lost. The girl stands in the hallway and
watches her mother comfort the other woman with sugar spun lies. Yes, I
feel you, I know what you're going through. We can and to tell
them the truth. Her mother reminds her afterwards, it won't work if someone
else tries the same trick. The girl is too young to understand. She
waves through the window as the other mothers walk away. The simulacrum sits waiting
in the back of the mother's wardrobe, hidden under a spare bedsheet, a
life sized doll made of wood and linen and desperation. Faceless and unfinished.
It's been sitting there for longer than the girl has been alive. The mother
started building it the day the doctor first told her she was expecting a female
child. The same day she first put her hand on her swollen belly and
felt the baby squirming inside her, a wild thing desperate to live. The
girl has not yet seen the simulacrum. She has only caught glimpses of the
blueprints, which her mother takes out once a year to update the necessary measurements
the size of her feet, the circumference of her skull, the length of
each arm. When the time comes, the mother will finish the simulacrum alone.
It will have a perfectly painted face that mirrors the girl's own. It
will have the girl's real blood pumping through its limbs, her real hair stitched
into the pale cloth of its scalp, her real teeth drilled into its gums,
her real fingernail clippings glued onto its fingers, and toes lined up like
the tiles of a mosaic. The mother will leave the simulacrum outside their front
door and wait. Even now, after all her planning, she does not
know for sure if it will work. She will spend the whole night waiting,
her arms wrapped around the girl, her pulse hot and fever quick,
listening to the weeping and wailing of the other mothers in the neighborhood who were
not clever enough to save their daughters. This way the mouth Man. Point
Pleasant, West Virginia, nineteen sixty six, two grave diggers working their cemetery
job heard something overhead. They looked up to the sky and saw the black
figure flying ghostly and unnatural. It was ten feet long, with large wings
and red eyes. These men didn't realize it at the moment, but they
were the first people to ever report a sighting of the moth Man. From
that day forward, Point Pleasant would see more encounters. Drivers spotting the creature
at night, hikers reporting a large winged thing sitting high in the trees.
Residents on sidewalks driven back to their homes after being followed by a pair of
red eyes attached to a shadowy outline. The most famous sighting of the Mothman
happened on the fifteenth of December nineteen sixty seven. Locals reported seeing a giant
winged creature flying over the Silver Bridge, a suspension bridge over the Ohio River,
the bridge connecting Point Pleasant to Gallip Police, Ohio. Moments later,
the bridge collapsed. Forty six people died. Investigators found a fracture in the
suspension chain, but many still insist the tragedy was the will of the Mothmaan.
In the decades after nineteen sixty seven, witnesses far beyond Virginia have come
forward to say they saw the Mothmaan moments before other terrible events accidents, fires,
massacres, natural disasters, as if this visitor brought calamity in the wake
of a its giant wings. Yet strangely, many see those catastrophes as merely
coincidental to them. The Mothman is merely a visitor from another plane, a
spectator, even a friend. Every third weekend in September, point Pleasant hosts
the Mothman Festival, a celebration of the other worldly cryptid. There are museums
and costumes, music and guided tours, a festival for a thing few people
have seen, but so many embrace to be safe, just in case.
If you ever see two red eyes in a shadow beyond, stop where you
are, turn and run the other way. Within seconds, you may see
a horror upon humans. Is he an agent of destruction or is he just
watching? We do not yet know. We only know that so many say
they've seen the Mothman and witnessed cruel happenings under the span of his wings.
Very often the most terrifying ghostly creatures don't just haunt us. They consume the
things around us. Maybe they eat soul, or animals or our children.
They devour what is vulnerable and precious. The people of Thailand have a ghost
they called the Hungry Ghost. These other worldly creatures were once human beings,
people who took advantage of other people in life. They lied and stole,
and cheated and harmed. They were agents of inhumanity that preyed upon their human
brothers and sisters in this world. In a way, they were charging up
a kind of karma, prospering in the living world, with the after life
oh waiting to make them pay for every misdeed, every lie, every abuse,
every grift. No, they were not going to get away with it.
After all, real world cretans waking up in the spirit world after death
no longer themselves, at least in form. They have become the Hungry Ghost.
If you had lived as one of these terrible people, your after life
form would be specific to the types of wrongs you had committed. If you
were stingy and greedy, you might have one form. If you had physically
harmed as someone, you'd have a different form. And so on. But
the forms all have certain things in common. Long necks, lean bodies with
protruding bellies, gray green or blackened skin, huge hands with spindly fingers.
You're as tall as a palm tree, with a head proportional to that body,
but your mouth would be as tiny as the eye of a needle.
Your inability to eat more than a speck at a time compounds your misery,
as your large stomach simply cannot be filled. You are tortured with hunger,
and as you walk among the trees and the darkness of night, you make
a high pitched wine of a scream, an outward expression of inner pain.
Your roam as a phantom, a monster. You are slithering in the land
of the living, desperate to feed. You are the hungry ghost. It's
interesting that, according to legend, human beings are rarely attacked by these spirits,
the famished phantoms often invisible to the human eye. The hungry ghosts instead
feed on other things as best they can. Of course, they are never
satisfied, and they also hunt offerings, offerings to give to the gods.
They must appease the gods. They must atone for their misdeeds in life by
gathering valuable things wherever they can find them, bringing those items to Buddhist temples,
and then laying down their findings at the feet of the good and the
hopes that they will encounter a merciful priest who will forgive and free them from
their prison. The story of the Hungry Ghost is often told to children to
keep them from misbehaving. Don't be cruel, don't lie, don't cheat,
don't steal, don't harm, because if you do, when you die,
you will be cursed to Rome as a hideous thing, as tall as a
building, with only a constant, horrible hunger at your side. You will
become the hung ghost. You know myself. I find a kind of magic
to this story. Wouldn't it be nice if karma was real? As we
live in a world where so many terrible people get away with it while so
many very good people suffer at their hands. So yes, I fantasize that
these people would be made to pay after death for all the bad things they
had done in life, creatures in their hearts. As living people, they
would become actual creatures, monsters, beasts, tormented spirits after death. Oh
yes, I'm guilty. I would love to see the agents of suffering get
a taste of suffering themselves, until finally they bring themselves before the altar of
the good in humility and penitence, regrets and change. Oh, we can
certainly imagine still to come. Two great ghost stories to climax the broadcast.
I've got a Noose and a Witch coming up next. It is the season
of the Witch and the Ghost, and the Jack o Lantern and the Black
Cats and the Big bad Spider and the vampire. So much good stuff going
on here in the month of October. As we continue with the final segment
of ghost Stories twenty twenty three, as so many ghostly legends come from stories
about real people in real places, allow me to tell you the story of
Alice Riley, which is also the story of the Hanging Square. January of
seventeen thirty four. There was a poor immigrant named Alice Riley. She arrived
in the American colonies, and she found herself in what would one day become
the town of Savannah, Georgia. Alice had had no money to pay for
the trip overseas, and so she sold herself into indentured servitude and became a
debt slave. She willingly sold her labor to a man named William Wise,
and to pay off her debt, she would work for him for five years.
Yet her master was not a good man. William Wise was oppressive and
petty and cruel. He abused her every day. He insisted that he be
personally groomed, washed and cleaned, and shaved and combed. He enjoyed the
attention that Alice was forced to shower upon him. He enjoyed the master's chair.
He enjoyed his slave, an attendant to his every whim, the object
of his con tempt, the target of his horrible temper. William was a
weak man. He was weak in character and weak in body. Perhaps his
abuse of other people made him feel big and strong. I suppose it was
inevitable that Alice had finally had enough. She reached the end of her tether,
and so she and a fellow servant, a butler named Richard White,
decided that they were going to end their misery. They decided they would end
William Wise. The date was March the first, seventeen thirty four. It
was time for the master's bath. William again stood at the tub with expectation.
Alice filled it with water, but before he could get inside the bath,
Alice and Richard grabbed him by the shoulders and they thrust his head under
the water. William thrashed and splashed, but in his weakness he was helpless.
He could not find the air to breathe. It was a terrible,
violent, cacophonous moment, until all became quiet and the Master lay slumped all
the way down, literally dead in the water. Alison Richard placed his body
upon the bed with a handkerchief around his neck to hide the trauma to his
body. What would happen now? Alice and Richard knew they would have to
flee for their very lives, but soon they were captured and arrested. They
were tried and both were sentenced to death by hanging. When Richard was dropped
from the rope and executed, Alice screamed out, I'm pregnant. I'm pregnant.
The colony doctor was brought in to verify, and he did. Alice
had been impregnated by the man she had just murdered. The father would be
her dead master, William Wise. Well, the town wasn't going to kill
a woman with William's child inside of her. She was dragged back to the
jail, and she was allowed to live there for another eight months until when
the baby was finally delivered. Alice Riley again faced the gallows in the middle
of Right Square in pre Savannah, Georgia, with a rope around her throat
and the platform about to fall beneath her feet. Alice shouted curses at the
townspeople who had come to gawk at her. She cursed them, and she
cursed them until this immigrant slave who rose up against her rebuser, was dropped
to the end of the hangar man's rope to send a message to the rest
of the town. Her dead body was left there for three days, hanging
in the breeze. At the end of the third day, Alice's body mysteriously
disappeared. It is said that the newborn baby died mysteriously just a few days
after that. This happened three hundred years ago. Today, Right Square is
known as the Hanging Square, a place where so many others would come to
die with broken necks at the gallows, the place where Alice Riley had died,
the place where she had disappeared, and she has reportedly reappeared from time
to time. People say they have been approached by a distraught woman asking where
is my baby? Have you seen my baby? I've got to find my
baby. Some of these people were so eager to help that they called the
Savannah Police Department. This has apparently happened so very often that veteran officers immediately
know it's Alice. She is said to be dressed in the clothing of her
time, but few people even look twice because of all the popular guided tours
in Savannah, where old and attire is common with tour guides and re enactors.
Alice is both anomaly and anonymous. The red band's scar at the neck
where the rope had once been walking and asking and pleading and crying and wailing.
New mothers are very protective of their own babies when walking right square.
They're nervous that Alice Riley might see their child, and somehow see her own.
She might strip the baby out of their arms disappear the way she disappeared
from that hanging noose three centuries ago. She had drowned her oppressor in the
bathwater. She had paid with her life, and in death she roams those
Savannah streets. Legend says that her ghost has been seen and reported more than
any other ghost in the history of the state of Georgia. Perhaps you can
visit right Squares someday and you can find out for yourself. The old woman's
house was different than the others, older worn down, the paint long gone,
the wood a gray blue, the door midnight black, with no windows.
No one ever arrived or left. No one was ever seen except for
the shadow of the witch in the window. That's what everyone said. She
was the witch in the window. It didn't take much for the neighbors to
whisper about her. Who is she? Why doesn't she ever go outside?
What goes on inside the house? Be careful, something's wrong there, not
natural, not safe, of course, what better place for a children's dare
than the house of a mysterious witch. Samuel, Tim and Michael were all
thirteen classmates in middle school, the best of friends. They'd been worned to
stay clear of the rotting old house. But these were young teenagers, frash
boys, invincible in their youth. One night, from their bikes, they
passed by to see something tied to the door, a string. Above that
string was a large orange balloon, just tethered to the doorknob and drifting in
the light breeze. If not an invitation, it was certainly a temptation and
the perfect opportunity to test one's courage. It was Tim who said it out
loud, go get that balloon, Just take it. Go ahead, I
dare you, Sam and Michael just looked back at him. It was easy
to be bowled on this side of the small picket fence surrounding the weeds and
thorns. Tim persisted, My dad gave me ten dollars. He pulled the
money out of his pocket like a rich man flashing a thousand. I will
give you ten dollars to get that balloon. His friends weren't smiling, they
weren't frowning. Their faces were neutral and blank and a little bit stunned.
Turning toward the balloon. They were obviously wrestling with the dare do it and
you're in the shadow of the witch. Refused to do it, and everyone
will find out that you're a coward. Tim dangled the money like a fisherman
dangling his line, praying that one of them would take the bait, and
after a few uncomfortable minds, his prayer was answered. Michael spoke up.
I'll do it, but I want the money right now. No way you're
going to cheat me if I do it. Tim hadn't been bluffing. He
grinned and paid. Nobody rushed to Michael even as he stood there gathering himself
for the mission. His buddies didn't goad him or push him. They were
happy to wait until he felt ready. And if they were to speak honestly,
even from a distance, they were a little bit afraid. The orange
balloon was no longer moving. The curtain of the upstairs window slowly opened.
The interior room flickered with candles. The shape of a woman filled the square
glass. The boys were hidden behind the shrubs, invisible, invisible thirty seconds,
and then she was gone. All was dark, All was still.
Michael had wrinkled the bill in his hand smashed into a ball. Before he
saw what he'd done, all eyes were on him. Go get the balloon.
Michael wouldn't use the gate. Too rusty, too risky, It would
certainly creak. He climbed the short fence and knelt down in the tall grass.
He gathered himself. Then he slowly moved forward, like a soldier in
battle, crawling enemy territory. He made himself small. He felt himself crawl
forward and forward, an inch at a time. The house loomed larger,
the door crept closer, the balloon got larger. The front left corner of
the house was covered in brush. This was Michael's hiding place before the final
act. Get the balloon, Get the balloon. He set his jaw and
tensed his body and coiled like a spring. The sprint to the door had
to be fast, lightning fast. Get the prize and get away. Breathe,
breathe, breathe, here we go. Five four, three two one.
Michael jolted from his hiding place and screamed toward the porch steps five short
steps that he leapt in one motion. He lunged at the door and grabbed
at the string. It popped into his hand without any resistance at all.
Michael fixed his grasp and boomeranged as fast as a boy could. Run away,
away, away. In the chaos of his retreat, the balloon grazed
his cheek. There was a flash of bright light, then blackness. Michael's
body was frozen in place, paralyzed. He couldn't even feel breath in his
lungs. He was a small statue suspended between worlds slowly all around him.
The black became gray, the gray became green, the green became red,
the red became orange. His muscles and movement returned to him. As he
began to reach out to touch the sinister shade of gold and saffron that enveloped
him. His fingers touched something like rubber, or later plastic or nylon.
It was meshy, elastic, sticky, and thick. He clawed with his
finger nails to hear the sound of hands on a party balloon, but it
would not tear. The more he tried to knife his round prison, the
thicker the sticky orange walls became. Watching all this from outside the fence,
where Samuel and Tim helpless and petrified. They cheered as their friend dashed from
the brush to the door, then screamed as he was immediately swallowed by an
orange floating quicksand the now large balloon, with the shadow of a boy barely
visible inside muffled yells barely audible. Beneath this glowing orb was the tiniest string,
dangling and drifting again in the breeze. The giant balloon just hung there,
still as a grave. The only movement was the flailing shadow of Michael
inside, scraping and clawing and climbing for nothing. Four eyes from two faces
were unable to blink. And then they looked up to that second floor window.
As the curtain again opened, the candles again flickered, and the shadow
of the woman reappeared in the frame. Slowly, her body began to sway
as she moved, The giant orange balloon began to sway left and right,
left and right, back and forth and back and forth. It was an
otherworldly dance until the figure reached forward to unlock the window latch. She raised
the glass. She leaned forward into the warm evening air. She pointed her
long dead corpse of a face at Sam and Tim. Her eyes weren't there
only black sockets of decay. They could see hair like filthy straw, hands
with unnatural fingers. The mythical witch wasn't a myth after all. With the
slightest of motion, the creature in the window held out her open palms.
She paused for a second, then she lifted them up. As she did.
The floating round prison lifted as well. It rose upward and upward,
above the house, over all houses higher and higher, smaller, and smaller.
The boys shaped shadow inside, climbing and clamoring to escape the balloon,
and the shadow rising far out of view, vanishing, vanishing. But wait,
was it? There was it returning, tiny, then bigger, then
bigger. The boys on the ground held their eyes to the horizon as the
round orange things slowed and stopped in the far away sky. It was the
boy, It was the balloon, It was the harvest moon. Samuel and
Tim turned towards the high house window. The shadow pointed toward them until the
boys could see teeth, blunt teeth revealed from separating lips and a wide open
mouth. The face stretched back, as if pulled by some strange gravity,
the Witch's teeth in a hideous grin. The breeze became still, the air
became chilled. The witch raised her hand, and the crone in the frame
spoke aloud. For the first and only time. She said, in a
satisfied voice, enjoy the moonlight, boys, And then she was gone.
Little Michael was gone, in a prison of both light and darkness, of
stretching in symmetry, a balloon with a string that could never be stolen.
No one would find him, no search would reveal him, nobody would see
or know him ever again, except for two teenagers that nobody believed no one
will ever know that their affectionate gaze at the Harvest Moon sees the boy locked
for life in that orange balloon. A masterful telling of that story by one
of three special guest narrators for this project. A huge thanks out to Sarah
Gray, to Grace Bellaston and Connor Brannigan, great storytellers and welcome additions to
Ghost Stories twenty twenty three. Thank you for listening, Happy Halloween, and
we'll do it again next year.