Speaker 1: Calarugu Shark Media. Welcome to Ghost Scary Stories and the
October Records, a month long Halloween nightmare. This is episode sixteen,
The Witness.
Speaker 2: October sixteenth, nineteen seventy four, Silas Crane. Emily Patterson is
eight years old. She was in the Hendrix house when
the visitor came through, the only one who didn't get marked,
the only one who saw what happened and remained unchanged. No,
not unchanged. She hasn't spoken since, but she draws, God Almighty,
She draws. Her parents brought me three boxes of drawings,
hundreds of them, all showing the same from different angles,
different moments, thirty figures standing in a circle around Millbrook
on Halloween night, but each drawing shows a bit more,
a bit further into the future. The first drawings show
the gathering, middle ones show the drowning, the entire town
sinking into itself like a drain unplugging, but the last ones,
the last ones show what comes after. Empty streets, empty houses,
but not abandoned, inhabited by things that used to be people,
things that learned to breathe water so well they forgot
how to breathe. There and at the center of each drawing,
always the same figure, a woman, sometimes young, sometimes old,
sometimes every age at once. She's pregnant in some drawings,
holding a knife in others, dead in several, alive in more,
but her face. Emily won't draw her face, leaves it blank.
When I asked her why, she finally spoke, just one sentenced.
She said, because she hasn't decided which face to wear yet.
Then she drew one more picture, showed it only to me.
It was me, dead in the library, October thirty first,
But standing behind my corpse was the faceless woman. And
she was holding these recordings, all thirty of them, playing
them all at once. The sound was visible in the drawing,
black spirals emanating from the records, wrapping around everything, pulling
it all down into a single point. Emily grabbed my hand.
Her touch was ice. She said. The witness isn't The
witness isn't watching. The witness is choosing, and she's already
chosen wrong five times.
Speaker 3: I need to explain why I keep playing these recordings,
despite knowing I'm Sarah Blackwood, the original murder victim, despite
knowing I die in fifteen days, despite the water now
constantly seeping from my skin. It's not compulsion anymore, it's
physical necessity. My body has synchronized with the recordings. If
I don't play one at exactly four thirty am each day,
I begin to dissolve. This morning, I was three minutes late.
My left hand liquefied. I watched my fingers run like
candlewax pooling on the desk. Only when the needle touched
vinyl did my hand re solidify. But it came back wrong.
The fingers are too long, now too flexible, and between
them the webbing has thickened. Emily Patterson lives in a
psychiatric facility, now has since nineteen seventy four, fifty one
years of drawing the same event, fifty one years of
perfect prophetic accuracy. The facility is a Victorian mansion converted
to medical use. As I walked up the driveway, I
saw her in the window. Not the sixty year old woman.
She should be still eight, still in the same dress
she wore the night the visitor came through, still covered
in the same water stains that never dried. Doctor Hartley
met me at the entrance. His hands shook as he
led me through the halls. She's been expecting you he said,
started drawing you three days ago, before you found the recordings.
She knows things, shows things. We've learned not to look
at her drawings directly anymore. Why he showed me his eyes.
The irises were gone, erased, just white sclearer with pinpoint pi.
Her drawings take things from you. The more you see,
the less you can see. I looked at one completely
once it showed this building. In five years, we were
all still here, but we were underwater, still working, still
treating patients. But the patients were fish, human shaped fish,
and we were happy about it. Emily's room was papered
with drawings floor to ceiling, thousands of them, all showing
the same event from infinite angles. Halloween night, the thirty gathering,
the town drowning. But as I looked closer, I saw
the variations. In some, the town sank. In others it rose,
lifted into the sky on a column of black water.
In some everyone died. In others everyone lived, but wrong,
and in the center of each the faithless woman Emily
sat as small desk drawing, still eight years old, still
soaking wet. The water from her dress had warped the
floor over decades, creating a permanent depression where she sat. Hello, Sarah,
she said, without looking up. You're early this time. Usually
you don't visit me until day eighteen. This time she
turned to face me, and I gasped. Her eyes weren't
clouded like the others. They were clear. But in them
I saw myself reflected infinitely, Not just me now, but
me in seventeen seventy four, eighteen twenty four, eighteen seventy four,
nineteen twenty four, nineteen seventy four, All the versions of
me that had lived, died, been reborn. This is the
sixth time, Emily said, the sixth October. You've tried to
break the pattern. You always fail, always die, always return
fifty years later to try again. But this time is different.
She stood up and walked to a section of wall
covered by a sheet, pulled it aside. The drawing underneath
was massive, detailed, horrifying. It showed me or Sarah, the
first me in seventeen seventy four, pregnant, standing by the lake.
But the thing emerging from the water wasn't a monster.
It was a man, a human man. His face was clear, detailed, recognizable.
It was someone I knew, someone currently alive. In Millbrook.
The murder, Emily said, wasn't supernatural. It didn't kill Sarah Blackwood.
A person did, a person who wanted what grew inside her,
who cut it out, who threw it in the lake.
And when the thirty babies emerged from the waters, it's children,
not Sarah's. He raised them, became the founding father of Millbrook.
He's still here, still alive, still feeding his other children
to it every fifty years to maintain his immortality. She
pointed to another drawing, the man unchanged in eighteen twenty four,
in eighteen seventy four, in nineteen twenty four, in nineteen
seventy four, and in twenty twenty five, Mayor Davidson, the
same face, the same man for two hundred fifty one years.
He kills you every time, Emily explained, every time you
get close to the truth October thirty first, But you
always come back because you're not fully human anymore. Sarah
Blackwood's consciousness reborn into her own bloodline every fifty years.
Trying to solve your own murder, trying to save your children,
the thirty families who think they're human, but aun't. She
showed me more drawings, the truth unfolding in horrible detail.
The thirty Founding Families weren't human. They were It's offspring,
born from Sarah's murdered womb, hybrids, part human from their mother,
part something else from their father, the thing in the lake,
and Mayor Davidson had been feeding them back to their
father one by one to keep them from realizing what
they were. But you can stop it, Emily said, this time,
you know the truth early. You have fifteen days to prepare,
fifteen days to gather the thirty, to tell them what
they are, to show them they don't have to feed
themselves to their father. They can choose to be human,
fully human, But it requires a sacrifice. She showed me
the final drawing me on Halloween night, standing in the fountain,
but not drowning, giving birth to thirty human babies. The
Founding Families reborn correctly, this time, without its influence, without
the hunger, without the need to feed. You have to
die as Sarah and be reborn as Margaret. One last time,
Emily said, complete the pregnancy that was interrupted two hundred
and fifty one years ago. Give birth to the true
Founding Families. Break the cycle. But she pointed to a
detail in the corner of the drawing. Maya Davidson with
a knife, the same knife, ready to perform the same murder.
He knows you know, Emily whispered, He's known all along.
Every time he lets you get close, because your investigation
is part of the pattern, the witness in investigating themselves,
the murdered, solving their own murder. It's the final irony
that feeds its endless hunger. Suddenly, Emily aged eight to
sixteen seconds, her child body stretched, wrinkled, collapsed into its
true age. She gasped, choking on decades of denied time.
He's here, she croaked. In the building, He comes for
everyone who knows. Run. Run. I heard footsteps in the corridor,
measured patient, the walk of someone who had all the
time in the world. I grabbed as many drawings as
I could and fled through the window behind me. I
heard Emily's scream, not in fear, in rage, fifty one
years of rage at being kept eight years old, forced
to draw the same truth over and over, never believed,
never helped, never allowed to grow up. When I looked back,
the psychiatric facility was sinking, the whole building, descending into
the earth. Like the apartment building had another point marked,
another depth achieved. But I had the drawings. I had
the truth. Mayor Davidson, the immortal founder, the keeper of
the pattern, the one who murdered me two hundred and
fifty one years ago and would murder me again in
fifteen days unless I murdered him first. Tomorrow I'll play
October seventeenth. Tomorrow, I'll learn what the doctor found. Tonight,
I'm studying Emily's drawings, learning the faces of the thirty children.
It's children, our children, the families that must choose whether
to be human or horror. And I'm sharpening a knife,
the same knife I realize that appears in Emily's drawings,
the knife that has killed me five times, the knife
that was waiting for me in my desk drawer when
I returned to the library with a note. Some patterns
can't be broken, only repeated. See you soon, Davidson.
Speaker 1: Ghost Scary Stories is a production of Caloroga Shark Media.
Some elements of a may have been used in this production,
but it was written, edited, mixed, and produced by Real
Live People Executive producers Mark Francis and John McDermott.