Speaker 1: Caloroga Shark Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Ghost Scary Stories and The Hunger.
This is episode two the Journal.
Speaker 1: The blizzard started at four am on November twenty second.
I woke to the sound of winds screaming against the cabin,
snow hitting the windows like handfuls of gravel. Emma was
already awake, standing at the window. Mom, look, the world
had disappeared, nothing but white fury in every direction. The
cars were already buried to their wheel wells. So much
for leaving early, Emma said. Downstairs, Uncle Pete had the
weather radio on. The automated voice was calm indifferent, unexpected
severe winter storm warning for the Frost Lake region. Two
to three feet of snow expected. Residents should shelter in place.
Road closures anticipated for seventy two to ninety six hours.
Ninety six hours. David said, that's past Thanksgiving. We have
plenty of food. Aunt Patricia said, but her laugh was nervous,
plenty of everything. Marcus stared out at the snow, just
like eighteen seventy four. Everyone turned to look at him.
What Marcus blinked, confused, I didn't did I say something?
Uncle Pete stood, It's time you all need to know
why you're here, why I really invited you. He walked
to the fireplace, reached up to the mantle and pulled
on something. A hidden drawer slid open. From it. He
took a leather bound journal, stained and ancient. This is
Josiah Brennan's journal, our great great grandfather, the man who
built this cabin, the man who saved our family line,
he paused, the man who damned it. We gathered around
as Pete opened the journal. The pages were yellowed, brittle,
the handwriting was cramped. Desperate, Pete began to read. November twentieth,
eighteen seventy four, the storm came without warning. Thirteen of
us here for Thanksgiving celebration, my brothers Thomas and William,
with their families, cousins from Duluth. The snow falls as
I've never seen, already four feet and rising. November twenty third.
Supply is running low. We had provisions for a week,
but not for thirteen souls. The children cry from hunger,
Thomas suggests, rationing. I fear it won't be enough. December first,
still snowed in. We've eaten everything, the horses, the dogs
boiled leather from shoes and belts. Martha's baby stopped crying yesterday,
stopped moving today. Pete's voice shook as he continued. December fifteenth,
Thomas is dying. Fell through the root cellar floor into
some old cave, broke his leg, infection setting in. He
begged me, begged me to use him. Said the family
must survive. Said the children must eat. God forgive me,
God forgive me. December sixteenth, we told the others Thomas
died in his sleep. The meat is it is only meat,
It is only survival. The children ate well today, color
returning to their cheeks. Emma grabbed my arm. Ma'am is
he's saying? December eighteenth, Thomas walks outside. I see him
through the window. But Thomas is dead. We consumed him.
Yet there he stands in the snow, changed, tall, so tall, thin,
his fingers, his fingers are too long. He scratches at
the walls. He speaks, but his voice is wind. He
says he's hungry, always hungry. Uncle Pete looked up from
the journal. There's more, weeks more, but the summary is this.
Josiah fed the family Thomas's body to survive. Thomas became
something else, something that comes back every Thanksgiving, something that
must be fed, or it takes the whole family. That's insane.
David said, you brought us here because of a ghost story,
not a ghost, Pete said. He walked to the window,
pointed at the scratches. Those are from last night. Fresh.
It's been getting more aggressive each year. Last Thanksgiving, I
tried not coming here. It found me in Minneapolis, followed
me to my apartment. Missus chen in three b disappeared
that night. They never found her body. You're saying you've
been feeding it, Sarah asked, deer elk whole cows. But
it's not enough anymore. It wants what it was promised,
what it's owed. Pete's hands were shaking family flesh. We're leaving,
I said, standing Emma, pack your things. Look outside, Sarah,
we're not going anywhere. He was right. The snow was
five feet deep, now still falling. Dana, who'd been quiet,
spoke up, where's the rest of the journal? You said
there were weeks more. Pete hesitated, locked in the root
cellar with other things evidence proof that this isn't just
a story. Then let's see it, Emma said, If you
want us to believe this show us proof the root
seller is off limits. Why? Emma challenged, what's down there?
Uncle Pete and Aunt Patricia exchanged glances. It's not safe,
Patricia said quickly. The stairs are rotted. But I saw
Marcus touch his pocket, heard the jingle of keys. That afternoon,
while the adults argued about leaving once the snow stopped,
Pete insisting we had to stay through Thanksgiving, David threatening
to call the police. Emma pulled me aside. Marcus gave
me these. She held up old iron keys. He said,
we deserve to know the truth. Emma, no, ma'am. Either
Uncle Pete is crazy and we need to know, or
he's telling the truth and we need to know. Either way,
she was right. That evening, during dinner, another excessive feast
of roasted meats, Emma excused herself. I followed a few
minutes later. The root cellar door was behind the kitchen,
painted over so many times it almost blended into the wall.
The lock was new, though heavy duty. The third key worked.
The smell hit us first earth and something else, something organic.
Emma used her phone's flashlight. The stairs were solid, not rotted.
A tall we descended. The cellar was larger than I expected.
Carved from bedrock, shelves lined the walls, filled with preserves,
canned goods, normal root, cellar things. But at the back,
another door, older. The wood was scarred with those same scratches. Mum,
the door was unlocked. Beyond it a natural cave, and
in the cave bones not animal bones. I'd helped with
enough archaeology digs in college to know human femurs, human ribs,
human skulls, some old, yellowed with age, others others still
had tissue, still had clothes. Emma's light found the wall.
Scratched into the stone were names and dates. Thomas Brennan
eighteen seventy four, Margaret Olsen nineteen twenty four, Mmes Brennan
nineteen seventy four, Jennifer Chen twenty twenty four, one name
for every fifty years. Then below fresher scratches. Elizabeth Patterson
Thanksgiving nineteen eighty seven, Robert Brennan Thanksgiving nineteen ninety nine,
Michael Davis Thanksgiving twenty eleven, Susan Chen Thanksgiving twenty twenty four. Mom,
that's that's last year. I grabbed Emma's hand to leave,
but her light caught something else the rest of Josiah's
journal placed on a natural shelf. I grabbed it behind
us a sound breathing. We turned. Marcus stood in the doorway,
but his eyes were wrong, clouded white like frost. You
shouldn't have come down here, he said, in a voice
that wasn't his older, hungrier. The family must eat, the
family must feed, the family must grow. He stepped forward,
and his movements were wrong, too fluid, like his joints
bent in extra places. We ran, pushed past him as
his fingers too long? Now, how were they suddenly too long?
Grabbed for us up the stairs, slammed the door, locked it.
Marcus pounded on it from below, then stopped. When he
appeared at dinner an hour later, he seemed normal, confused.
Even where did you two disappear to? He asked. That night,
Emma and I barricaded our door and read the rest
of Josiah's journal by flashlight. The entries got worse January
eighteen seventy five. It comes every night, Thomas, not Thomas.
It teaches me things, shows me how to prepare the meat,
how to preserve it, how to make it last one
family member every fifty years, It says, or it takes
them all. February eighteen seventy five. I understand now. When
we ate Thomas, we didn't just survive. We changed, became
part of it. We carry it in our blood now,
in our bones. We are the Wendigo's children. It is
our father and our hunger and our curse. March eighteen
seventy five. The others have left. Only my immediate family remains.
They don't remember the winter I've made them forget. But
I remember, and I've built the cellar, built the altar,
made the preparations. In fifty years, it will hunger again,
and we will feed it, one of us or all
of us. The final entry I should have let us starve.
Starvation would have been clean. Holy. This is something else.
We are something else. When you eat the flesh of
your own, you don't just break God's law. You become
the breaking. You become the hunger that never ends. Emma
looked at me, ma'am. We have to get out of here.
Outside our window, something scraped against the cabin, high up,
higher than anything should be able to reach. Then Uncle
Pete's voice through the door. Two more days until Thanksgiving.
I'm sorry, Sarah, I'm so sorry. But one of us
has to feed it, or all of us will We
can leave, We can all just leave. No, we can't
look at Marcus. It's already in him, using him. It
won't let us go, not until it's fed. And this year,
this year, it wants a proper meal, a family meal.
His footsteps retreated. Emma and I sat on the bed,
the journal between us outside, the blizzard raged inside, something
with Marcus's face and Thomas Brennan's hunger waited in the
cellar two days until Thanksgiving. Two days to figure out
how to stop a hunger that had been growing for
one hundred and fifty one years, or two days to
decide who would satisfy it.
Speaker 2: Ghost Scary Stories is a production of Caloroga Shark Media.
Some elements of AI may have been used in this
production that it was written, edited, mixed, and produced by
Real Live People Executive producers Mark Francis and John McDermott