Speaker 1: Calarogu Shark Media, Hello, and welcome to Ghost Scary Stories.
This episode is titled Feast, a Thanksgiving Horror Story. Episode
four Inheritance.
Speaker 2: Time slip sideways in Blackwood House. Now, I watch my
family through walls that have become permeable as skin, see
them moving through generations of memory and mutation. Elizabeth's transformation
ripples through the structure like waves through water, and I
can no longer tell which screams come from the present
and which echo from past feasts. The grandfather clock strikes thirteen,
then zero, then speaks in Margaret's voice. Grace stands in
what was once Elizabeth's room, watching her wife dissolve into
the architecture. Elizabeth's fingers have become one with the wallpaper,
her smile stretching across crown molding, her eyes multiplying in
every corner. The baby moves beneath layers of wall and flesh,
hungry for its first taste of preserved mother's love. You're
recording this, aren't you, Grace? Elizabeth's voice comes from every direction.
That's why we chose you. The family needed a witness,
an archivist, someone to document the becoming Grace's journalist's instincts
battle with her horror as she takes notes with shaking hands.
Even now she can't help herself. The hunger for truth
is almost as strong as our other appetites. Emily and
her cousins dance through rooms that shouldn't exist, leading a
procession of blackwood children from every era. Their shadows fall
in impossible directions, showing what they're becoming underneath their human flesh.
They sing, counting rhymes that double as recipes. One for
mother in the walls, two for father when he calls,
three for children growing tall, four for hunger eating all.
I remember my own transformation, now, memories I've kept locked away,
seeping through cracking mental walls. How Margaret taught me the
true taste of family, How she prepared me to guide
the next generation. The price of being patriarch is paid
in mouthfuls of understanding. Sarah works in a kitchen that
has become a cathedral of consumption. The cookbook hovers open
before her, its pages turning by themselves, showing recipes that
write themselves in fresh red ink. Michael helps her prepare
preservation jars, each one containing something that used to be someone.
Do you remember dad, Sarah asks, her head turning too
far to look at me. The first time mother fed
us properly, How the hunger felt like coming home. The
walls of Blackwood House have become transparent in places like
living amber, preserving moments of family history. I watched scenes
play out in layers. The first winter of eighteen forty seven,
when the colony discovered what they could become. Nineteen twenty three,
when my grandmother taught her children the proper way to
prepare family meals. Nineteen eighty six, when Margaret first showed
me what lurked beneath her skin. All happening now, all
happening always. Come see Grace, Emily calls, standing in a
doorway that opens into eighteen forty seven. Come see how
it started. Grace follows her reporter's notebook, filling with observations
her mind was fuses to accept. Through the temporal breach.
We watched the first Blackwood Feast, the starving colonists, the
choice they made, the entity they invited in trading humanity
for survival. We didn't just eat to live, Emily explains,
her voice, harmonizing with generations of Blackwood children. We live
to eat to consume to become. Elizabeth's voice drifts through
the house's bones. The baby comes soon and so hungry, Grace,
so ready? Can you feel it? The house shivers with anticipation.
In the kitchen, Sarah opens a preservation jar that bears
Margaret's label. The essence inside reaches for her with tendrils
of remembered love. Mother always knew. Sarah whispers that Grace
would be perfect for our family, a natural investigator, someone
who would dig until she found the truth, until she
understood what she needed to become. Michael emerges from the cellar,
decades of preserved family memories staining his lips. I tried
to warn you, Grace, he says, teeth elongating as he speaks.
All those times I got drunk and rambled about what
really happened to mother. But you had to keep investigating,
had to keep pushing, had to know the truth, the truth,
Grace repeats, her pen moving across paper of its own accord.
Now about what this family is? The children's shadows dance
across walls that show centuries of blackwood feasts. Emily points
to each scene. See every generation, every feast, every mother preserved,
every child fed, every father guided, and now Grace's hand
trembles as her pen writes words. She isn't choosing the
role of witness, observer, keeper of records, the one who
documents the family's transformation through clear, untainted eyes until until
those eyes change. Elizabeth's voice comes from the walls, until
they see properly, until they hunger for the right things.
I feel my own careful control crumbling. As the house
enters its final phase of transformation. The east wing has
become a nursery of horrors, ready to receive Elizabeth's child,
ready to witness another generation's first feast, show her Grandpa.
Emily urges, show her the book of names. My hands
shake as I open the ancient ledger, names written in
substances that still gleam wet, the first colonists, their children,
their children's children, an unbroken line of hunger and transformation.
Your name is already there, Grace, I tell her, it
always has been. The family chooses carefully, plans generations ahead.
Elizabeth didn't marry you by chance. The grandfather clock speaks
in Margaret's voice. Time to become dear Grace, time to witness,
time to record, time to hunger. Grace's pen keeps writing,
even as she tries to pull her hand away. The
truth spills onto pages that pulse like living skin, written
in ink that smells of copper and possibility. The east
wing calls us all. Now, its geometry is shifting to
accommodate Elizabeth's final transformation. Grace's footsteps leave marks that glow
with inherited memory as the house guides her toward her destiny.
The children follow their procession, now including shadowy figures of blackwood,
offspring from every era. You see them too, don't you,
Michael asks Grace, The others, the ones who came before,
the ones who feast with us always. His smile spreads
too wide, teeth gleaming with generations of remembered meals. That's
how it starts. First you see, then you record, then
you hunger. The nursery has become a cathedral of consumption,
its walls lined with preservation jars that pulse in rhythm
with Elizabeth's becoming. She exist in layers, now partly in
the walls, partly in the air, partly in the house's
hungry bones. The baby moves beneath surfaces that are neither
flesh nor wall, ready to emerge into its birthright. Write
it down. Elizabeth's voice echoes, write how it feels. Grace,
write the truth of what we are. Grace's pen moves faster,
her eyes widening as the words flow. The house breathes,
the walls digest, The family consumes and is consumed, an
auroborus of appetite and preservation. The truth is yes, Emily
encourages her small hand, now sporting too many fingers, all
of them pointing to past feasts playing out in transparent walls.
Tell them what we are, what we've always been. Sarah enters,
carrying the cookbook that first recorded our transformation. Mother wrote
it all down too, she says, every mother does, every witness,
every keeper of the family records. The hunger must be documented,
must be understood, must be preserved. Grace whispers, her voice,
harmonizing with the house's digesting groans. Her pen writes in
ink that gleams like fresh blood. The Blackwood legacy isn't
just consumption. Its preservation, conservation, the retention of every moment,
every meal, every memory, a family that exists in all times,
all places, all states of becoming. The children's shadows dance
across centuries of feasts as Elizabeth's voice emerges from every surface.
And now you understand, my love, why it had to
be you, A journalist, an investigator, someone who would compose
the perfect record of our family's nature. My own carefully
maintained facade cracks further as ancient hunger's surface. I see
myself in every father's role, in every feast, in every transformation,
show her. I hear Margaret's voice urge from the grandfather clock,
Show her the true archives. The house shifts again, walls
becoming transparent like living stained glass. Every room shows a
different era, a different feast, a different transformation. In each one.
A witness records, a mother preserves, a family consumes. Look closely,
Emily says, her form flickering between child and something older, hungrier.
Every archive holds a piece, Every record tells a part.
But you, Grace, you'll write the complete truth, the full story,
the perfect preservation of what we are. Grace's hand moves
without her volition, now filling pages with revelations. Her mind
still tries to reject the pen bleeds truth onto paper
that writhes with family history. Elizabeth's transformation nears completion as
the baby moves closer to its emergence. The house groans
with anticipation. The children sing their counting rhymes that are
really recipes, that are really rituals of becoming. You taste
it now, don't you? Michael asks Grace, the truth, the hunger,
the legacy. Grace's eyes reflect the light of a thousand
preserved moments as she writes. The Blackwood family doesn't just consume.
It archives, it preserves. It maintains a living record of
every feast, every transformation, every moment of becoming. And I yes,
Elizabeth's voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. Tell them what
you are, my love. Grace's pen flows faster. I am
the witness, the recorder, the keeper of terrible truths. I
am the house shivers, the children's shadows dance. Elizabeth's laugh
echoes through generations of mothers, preserved in walls and memories
and carefully sealed jars. And Grace writes the final truth,
her hand moving in patterns older than hunger itself. I
am the one who will document the feast, the one
who will witness the consumption, the one who will record
the final transformation. I am the grandfather. Clock strikes an
hour that exists outside of time. The East Wing prepares
for birth and becoming, the Archives open their hungry pages,
and Grace finally fully understands her inheritance. After all, every
family needs its historian, every feast needs its witness, every
transformation needs its scribe. And Tomorrow, Tomorrow We Feast.
Speaker 1: Ghost is a Caloroga Shark Media production, written and hosted
by Alexander Ian McIntyre, produced by Mark Francis. Executive producers
Mark Francis and John McDermott. Portions of this podcast may
have been created with the assistance of AI. This show,
along with hundreds of others from Caloroga Shark Media, is
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