Speaker 1: Calaruga Shark Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to ghost Scary Stories and the October Records, a
month long Halloween nightmare. This is episode two, The Thing
in the Walls.
Speaker 3: M October two, nineteen seventy four, Silas Crane, Millbrook Public Library.
Missus Eleanor Davidson called me at home last night three
in the morning. She knows I'm documenting the strange events.
News travels fast in Millbrook. She said, something is living
inside her walls, between the plaster and wood, in the
spaces where nothing should fit. She can hear it breathing, wet, labored,
breathing like lungs full of water, trying to draw air.
It moves at night, she says, follows her from room
to room, always staying inside the walls, always just out
of sight. This morning I went to see her the house.
The house is wrong. Every family photograph on the walls
shows the Davidsons as they should be, Eleanor, her husband Robert,
their two boys, But behind them in every photo there's
another figure, blurred, wet looking, standing just over their shoulders.
Eleanor says it wasn't there yesterday. She's been finding hand
prints too, coming from inside the walls. Pressing outward through
the wallpaper, like something trying to escape. Small hands child sized,
but the fingers are too long. This afternoon she called again.
Robert had tried to open the wall in their bedroom.
Convinced an animal was trapped. He put a hammer through
the drywall, and water poured out, black water that smelled
of rot. But when he pulled away more dry wall,
the space behind was dry, bone dry, just the old
wooden slats and insulation. The water had no source. At
six o'clock this evening, Eleanor Davidson disappeared. Robert found only
a wet outline on their bed, soaked through to the mattress,
the shape of a person. But Eleanor is gone. The
breathing in the walls has stopped. But now Robert says
he can hear something else singing a woman's voice from
inside the walls. It sounds like Eleanor.
Speaker 1: I played the second record this morning at exactly four
point thirty am, alone in my office. I'd spent the
night in the library. I couldn't bring myself to leave
after what happened yesterday, The thought of those children walking
through solid doors, of those corrupted books on my shelves,
made home feel impossibly far away. Missus Eleanor Davidson. I
knew that name. The Davidson family has been in Millbrook
since its founding. They owned the Davidson Funeral Home. Three
generations of morticians. Professional proximity to death. My grandmother used
to say, give some families a particular sensitivity to what
lies beyond. After listening to Silas's recording, I did what
I'd been dreading. I looked up the current Davidson house.
Eleanor Davidson died in nineteen seventy four, officially of a stroke,
though her body was never found, only that wet outline
Silas described. Robert Davidson sold the house within a month
and moved to Portland with their sons, but the house
didn't stay empty. By nineteen seventy five, new Davidson's had
moved in cousins from out of state, drawn by the
surprisingly low price. The pattern repeated. Every Davidson who lived
in that house reported the same things before vanishing, Breathing
in the walls, wet handprints, photos that changed, and then
always the wet outline on a bed, a chair, a carpet,
The shape of a person dissolved into water. The current
owner is Marcus Davidson, Eleanor's great nephew. He inherited the
house five years ago. I drove there this afternoon. The
Davidson house sits on Maple Street, a perfectly ordinary Victorian,
painted cheerful yellow with white trim. Marcus answered the door
before I could no. He looked exhausted, dark circles under
his eyes, his clothes rumpled as if he'd slept in them.
You're the librarian, he said, not a question. You found something,
didn't you, something about October nineteen seventy four. I nodded,
unsure how much to reveal. Come in, He said, you
need to see this. The smell hit me immediately, mildew rot,
that same sweet sick smell from the library's sub basement.
It seemed to emanate from the walls themselves. Marcus led
me to the living room. Every family photo hung askew,
and I understood why. Behind the glass. Pressed against each
image were handprints, small wet handprints that hadn't been there
when the photos were framed. Which picture The Davidson family
members smiled at the camera, unaware of the blurred figure
standing behind them. The figure was clearer in newer photos,
almost solid, almost recognizable. It started three days ago, Marcus said,
September twenty ninth. The breathing. I thought it was the
pipes at first old house, you know, But pipes don't
follow you room to room. Pipes don't know where you're sleeping.
He showed me the walls. The wallpaper, a tasteful blue
stripe that probably dated from the nineteen nineties, was bubbling, blistering,
as if water was pushing through from behind. But when
Marcus pressed on a bubble, it was dry. The wallpaper
cracked like old paint, revealing nothing but normal wall beneath.
This morning, he continued, leading me upstairs, I found these.
The hallway walls were covered in handprints, hundreds of them,
all pressing outward from inside the walls, all child sized
but wrong, the fingers too long, the palms too narrow.
They formed a path leading to the master bedroom. Inside
the bedroom, the walls were weeping. That's the only way
to describe it. Water ran down in steady streams, pooling
on the floor, but the plaster wasn't wet. The water
appeared to materialize from the surface, itself, emerging from nowhere,
returning to nothing. When it hit the floor. My wife
left yesterday, Marcus said, quietly, took the kids to her mother's. Said,
I was having a breakdown. Said there's no water, no handprints,
no breathing. But you see it, don't you? You see it?
All I did, And I saw something else, something Marcus
hadn't noticed yet. The water on the walls wasn't random.
It was forming letters words, a message, one from each.
The pattern requires one from each. Mister Davidson, I said, carefully,
I think you should leave today. Now, he laughed, bitter
and short. Where would I go this house? It doesn't
let Davidson's leave, Not really. My great uncle Robert tried,
made it all the way to Portland, but he came back.
They always come back. Were tied to this place. This
is the first point, the first point of what the
pattern every fifty years. It starts here. This house is
the first point of something that spreads across the whole town.
Great aunt Eleanor knew. That's why she called your predecessor.
She wanted someone to document it, to remember, because everyone
else forgets. He walked to an old secretary desk and
pulled out a leather journal. She left this hidden in
the walls. Ironically enough found it when I was renovating
five years ago. The journal was Eleanor Davidson's. The entries
began normally household accounts, social observations, recipe notes, but as
October nineteen seventy four progressed, they became something else. Frantic
documentation of the sounds in the walls, sketches of symbols
she'd seen in the water stains, and on October second,
nineteen seventy four, her final entry, It's not in the walls.
It is the walls. The house itself is breathing. The
house itself is alive, and it's hungry. It wants one
of us, one Davidson for the pattern. I can feel
myself dissolving, becoming water, becoming part of the house. This
is how we pay, This is how we've always paid,
one from each family, one from each The entry ended
mid sentence. Your great aunt, I said, she didn't die.
She became part of the house. Yes, they all do.
Every Davidson who gets taken, they become part of the structure.
That's why we can't sell it, can't leave it. The
house is made of our family. As if responding to
his words, the breathing in the walls grew louder, urgent, hungry.
Marcus turned to me, and I saw his eyes were
beginning to cloud at the edges, just slightly, like the
first wisps of fog. It'll be me this time, he said, quietly.
I'm the only Davidson of the right age between seven
and seventy. Those are the rules, and I'm the only
one who stayed. The others new to run. But someone
has to be here, someone has to pay our family's debt.
I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that there
had to be another way. But I'd heard Silas's recording,
I'd read Eleanor's journal. The Davidsons were the first point
of the pattern, and the pattern required payment. I left
Marcus Davidson standing in his weeping bedroom, watching the water
form new words on the walls. Words I didn't stay
to read. I couldn't because I recognized one of them.
It was my family name, Blackwood. When I returned to
the library, I found something waiting on my desk, A
small wet handprint on a piece of paper below it,
written in water that was already evaporating, a single line
twenty nine houses, twenty nine families, twenty nine more to
mark the pattern remembers. Tomorrow, I'll play October third. Tomorrow,
I'll learn about the night shift at Mercy General Hospital. Tonight,
I'm staying in the library again because I've realized something.
The Davidson House is the first point of the pattern.
The library where those children appeared, must be another. We're
all points on something being drawn across Millbrook, something that
requires thirty specific locations, thirty specific families, thirty specific sacrifices,
and I'm beginning to understand that my role isn't to
stop it, it's to witness it.
Speaker 2: Ghost Scary Stories is a production of Calaoga Shark Media.
Some elements of AI 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