Speaker 1: Welcome friends. You've just stepped into another tale brewed from
the haunted kettle at Cozy Horror, where the scares are
soft and the tea is strong, and the ghosts they
don't always know when to leave. I'm your host, Julie Hopkins.
Tonight we check in you a quiet little inn at
the edge of the lake. Meet Rose, a widow with
a warm heart and a heavy one. The fall tourists
are gone, but winter still hasn't quite arrived, and she's
got a room to rent to a guest who seems
oddly familiar and isn't quite ready to move on. So
settle in, pull your blanket tight, and whatever you do,
don't ask too many questions about the guests in room four.
You might not want to know the answers. This is
hauntings and hot chocolate.
Speaker 2: It was the quiet season, the space between carved pumpkins
and Christmas lights. The leaves had gone brittle on the
trees as the frost crept up the windows, and no
one had booked a room in days. Most years, Walter
and I would spend this time repainting a room or
fixing a step before sneaking away for a weekend. Ourselves,
but it was just me now, and the silence was
so much louder than it used to be. Hi, Maggie,
I can't talk long. I'm working up the motivation to
pack up these ghosts and ghoules.
Speaker 3: I hear you. I'm so over Halloween. It's time to
get the Christmas tree up.
Speaker 4: I don't know if I have the energy for all
that this year. Well, you can always come over and
enjoy mine. Actually that's why i'm calling. Are you planning
on visiting this weekend? There's a new apple pie recipe
I've been meaning to try, Maggie, Rose. Maggie, you promised
you come, no excuses. You know what this weekend is.
I know.
Speaker 3: I have to go. I think someone walked in. Rose,
don't do this, you promise.
Speaker 5: Hi. Good evening.
Speaker 3: I didn't hear a car pull up.
Speaker 5: Apologies. I wasn't sure you were still open.
Speaker 3: We are not many folks wandering this time of year,
so we have plenty of room.
Speaker 5: To sign set vacancy. So I thought i'd try my luck.
Speaker 2: You're just in time. I was about to lock up.
What brings you to Whispering Pines? Just passing through? Not
much out this way, but I'm happy to have the company.
I'll just need your name and ID to check you in.
Speaker 6: Oh I don't have an ID, no ID. I've had
some things stolen. I've just been making do.
Speaker 3: Do you have a credit card I can put on file?
Speaker 2: No afraid, not sorry, you don't have any cash to you?
Speaker 5: No, ma'am.
Speaker 3: Well, in that case, I could use a little help
around here.
Speaker 5: Thank you. I'll make myself useful, however I can.
Speaker 2: You can start by telling me your name, Elliott, just Elliott,
no ID, no money. Most folks would have turned him
right back into the night. But I've always had good
instincts about people, and he seemed kind a little lost.
Who wasn't.
Speaker 3: You look familiar? Have you stayed here before?
Speaker 5: I'm not sure. Things get blurry sometimes.
Speaker 2: You've got one of those faces. Room four is open, cozy, quiet,
and a great view of the water. Breakfast is at
seven am. If you need anything, I'm Rose, Thank you, Rose,
good night. There was something strange about that man, and
even stranger was how familiar he felt. The next day,
after a quiet breakfast by the fire, I asked to
Elliott to help me put away the Halloween decorations.
Speaker 3: This is nice boxing up one hundred tiny paper skeletons.
Speaker 5: There's something satisfying about packing away a season.
Speaker 3: I suppose that's true. It makes room for the next season.
Speaker 5: What's this These paintings, they're yours.
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I haven't looked at those in years. Yeah,
those are mine. I used to paint when I was
a kid.
Speaker 5: They're beautiful.
Speaker 2: I remember this one. When I was younger, fifteen maybe sixteen.
My parents were fighting a lot. This was before they
got divorced. Some nights their yelling would get so bad
I couldn't stand to be around them. I used to
sneak out and sit in the rowboat. One night, I
paddled to the middle of the lake. I was so
sad and angry and lonely. I didn't really care where
I ended up. I just paddled, you know how teenagers
can be. And then I saw a light across the
lake blinking. It was a lighthouse. I don't remember much
from that night. I'm not even sure how I got
back home. Well, the next day I painted this.
Speaker 5: There's no lighthouse on the lake now.
Speaker 2: That's the thing. There hasn't been one in almost one
hundred years. It was torn down long before I was born.
Speaker 5: Then, how did you see it?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I must have seen a picture of it somewhere and
then imagined everything that night. You live with something long enough,
you start forgetting if it really happened, or if we
made it all up, just some story we tell ourselves.
Speaker 5: Let's go there, where, to the place where you saw
the lighthouse?
Speaker 3: Why?
Speaker 5: Why not?
Speaker 2: The boat's still out back. I haven't touched it. You're
welcome to take it out later.
Speaker 5: You don't want to come.
Speaker 2: Oh, I haven't been on the lake in over a year,
not since Walter died. It's beautiful this time, right before
the lake freezes over. We take the boat out and
look at the leaves and bring a thermos of hot chocolate.
Speaker 5: You miss him.
Speaker 2: He was the love of my life. This weekend would
have been our anniversary.
Speaker 5: Don't you think he'd want you to enjoy yourself?
Speaker 3: It just doesn't feel right without him.
Speaker 5: Well, what if we see the lighthouse?
Speaker 3: We won't?
Speaker 5: Are you sure? Because I'm not?
Speaker 3: What makes you say that?
Speaker 5: I'm pretty sure I've seen it? Really when I don't remember?
Speaker 2: All right, we won't have that many nice days left
before winter. Let's go see if the boat still floats.
Do you want some hot chocolate? It's tradition. I won't
subject to you to the other traditions. What are the
other traditions? The Walter Woodbrow and I would sing show
tunes badly. He said it was charming, which meant terrible.
Speaker 5: I'm sure it's very charming.
Speaker 3: I think this is where I saw it. The lighthouse
was over there, right on that bluff.
Speaker 5: Do you have any idea why they tore the lighthouse down?
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's a shame, although it does have
kind of a dark history. In nineteen eleven, a fishing
boat hit the rocks during a storm. Almost everyone drowned,
and the lighthouse keeper disappeared. It was a real tragedy.
You know. I'm glad we did this, even if it
was a little anti climactic. It's nice out here, isn't it, Elliott?
Speaker 6: They didn't see the light? Who the people on board
the ship? Why didn't they see the light from the lighthouse?
Speaker 3: Apparently it never came on that night. No one knew why.
Speaker 5: Oh a tragedy.
Speaker 6: Indeed, are you okay? No? No, I don't think I
am rose. I know why the light wasn't on. I
remember now you remember it wasn't on because I didn't
light it. What I was the lighthouse keeper, and that
night I was very sad. The woman I was going
to marry had died, and when the storm rolled in,
I couldn't move.
Speaker 5: I couldn't climb the stairs.
Speaker 6: I just sat there, stuck until I heard the crash.
Speaker 3: Elliot, what's happening?
Speaker 5: I went out. I tried to help, but the storm
was so strong.
Speaker 2: The sky, once bright and clear, was blanketed by angry,
gray clouds. The waters grew choppy as the rain started,
and all at once, Elliot and I found ourselves trapped
in the middle of the worst thunderstorm I had ever experienced.
At first, I thought it was debray, driftwood, maybe, or
a trick of the light. But then I saw the faces,
dozens of them, pale and reaching, eyes wide with panic.
Their mouths moved like they were screaming, but all I
heard was waves in wind.
Speaker 3: Elliott, do you see that there are people in the water.
Speaker 5: We have to help them.
Speaker 2: They were all around us, clawing at the sides of
the boat. I reached out and tried to grab a
wrist to pull someone in, but my hand went right
through him.
Speaker 3: They're not real.
Speaker 5: They're ghosts, and so am I.
Speaker 2: The boat kept drifting forward, and we both saw the
lighthouse rising out of the mists. Like a dream, no,
like a nightmare. I looked into the water, alive with ghosts,
and for one terrible moment, I wondered what it would
be like to fall in. And that's when I realized
I had been here before. I remembered exis exactly what
happened that night when I was a teenager, when I
had seen the lighthouse. It was the night I almost
drowned in my own sadness. The lighthouse had once guided
ships safely to the harbor, but now it guided something
else entirely.
Speaker 5: Souls rose stay in the boat.
Speaker 2: That was what he had said all those years ago,
that strange man who appeared in my boat in my
darkest moment. It was Elliott, the guilt ridden lighthouse keeper
who had stopped me from going overboard. That was why
he had looked so familiar. We were two souls connected
by sadness, our timelines colliding when we needed each other
the most. I had been through this storm before, I
had seen these ghosts. I had taken this journey before,
and I had gotten so very close to crossing over.
But I wasn't a teenager anymore, and I could survive
this storm. As I watched Elliott gaze into the water,
I knew he was so close to falling in. This
storm would swallow him up. Maybe it had many times before,
but he couldn't remember. He couldn't move past his guilt,
his pain, his sadness. So it was my turn to
save him. I grabbed Elliott's hand. Elliott, stay in the boat.
Elliott's eyes flicked up to meet mine. He swallowed, frozen
with beer.
Speaker 5: I have to save them, You can't.
Speaker 3: They're already gone. You have to let them go.
Speaker 2: Elliott slowly sat back down in the boat. Look the
souls from that shipwreck, they're not really here, not anymore.
Speaker 3: You're the only ones still reliving that night.
Speaker 5: Rose. Have we been here before?
Speaker 2: You paddled me back home when I wasn't strong enough.
I remember, and now I'm going to take you home.
Elliott smiled and let out a heavy sigh.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I gripped the oars and swung them with all my might,
paddling us toward the lighthouse. But before we made it
to the bluff, Elliot had faded away. When I got
back to the inn, the guest book was open, a
pen resting on top of the page.
Speaker 6: Rose, thank you for bringing me home. Walter wants you
to know. Go live, laugh, take pies with your sister,
don't let your light go out, not yet. With warmth, elliot.
Speaker 2: Grief, guilt and memories that change like a stormy sky,
it's so easy to drift, to lose your way. Sometimes
you just need someone to grab the oars and paddle
you home.
Speaker 4: Are you calling to cancel on me?
Speaker 2: I'm calling to ask what kind of ice cream you
want for that apple pie you're coming?
Speaker 3: What changed your mind? It's a long story. I'll tell
you when I see you.
Speaker 2: It's still our anniversary. But instead of waiting for ghosts,
I think I'll go back to be with the living
apple pies, bad movies, my sister's kitchen. It might not
be the same kind of love, but it's love just
the same.
Speaker 1: Wasn't that a heartwarmer with a little extra After life,
Rose learned that grief may hang around like a ghost
with bad timing, but sometimes it just needs a gentle
nudge and a boat ride across a haunted lake to
move on. And Elliott. Let's just say he finally turned
off the light and found peace on the other side. Though,
between you and me, I think he'll still peek in
from time to time. So the next time you're clinging
to the past like the last leaves of autumn, just
remember life's still out there, waiting, maybe with the thermos
of hot chocolate. Hauntings and Hot Chocolate was written and
produced by your host, Julie Hopkins. This has been another
episode of Cozy Horror, where the darkness has never been
so inviting. Until next time, keep your heart warm, your
lantern lit, and your guest book open.