Speaker 1: Before I tell you how this ends, let me untangle
who's telling it. There are three of us wearing the
same name, and you need to know which voice is which.
I'm Margaret Blackwood, the real one, thirty four years old,
head librarian at Millbrook Public Library for the past six years.
When I was eight, I found blank records in the
library basement and made up a scary story, created an
imaginary friend to live through it so I wouldn't have
to be scared. I'm that imaginary friend void Margaret, the
hollow one, the space where a person should be. I
thought I was real, thought I was the librarian finding
recordings from nineteen seventy four. But I've been playing blank records,
speaking horrors into existence without knowing it. Every word Silas
Crane said, I was saying every death in nineteen seventy
four I created by believe.
Speaker 2: It happened, and my mate year old Margaret, the one
who started all this by playing pretend. I recorded the
last three records as a way to stop my own
scary story if it got too real.
Speaker 1: The record player isn't just a machine. It's a threshold,
a place where fiction becomes fact. When I play a
record I'm not hearing the past. I'm creating it. Silas
Crane never existed until I played that first recording. The
pattern never existed until I believed in it. The entity,
the thing that's been trying to manifest. It's been using her,
my imaginary friend, as its mouth. She's been its stylus,
playing its song into reality. And now I know the truth.
I'm holding the final record in my hands, But the
record is me. I am the thirtieth recording. Whatever I
speak next becomes the truth. I can complete the pattern
and doom everyone, or or she can tell a different story,
the one eight year old me always wanted where the
hero saves everyone. So now you know. The voice in
the center, that's me narrating this nightmare. The voice on
the left, that's me speaking in the story. The voice
on the right, that's the real Margaret, the one who
created me. Three Margarets at the Fountain on Halloween night,
about to decide the fate of Millbrook. Here's how it ends.
Calaroga Shark Media, Welcome to Ghost, Scary Stories and the
October Records, a month long Halloween nightmare. This is episode
thirty the Choice.
Speaker 2: October thirtieth. This is Margaret. Tomorrow is Halloween, and the
pretend Margaret has to choose. She's holding herself in her hands,
the record that is hers. If she plays it, she
becomes real, but everything else becomes pretend. If she breaks it,
she goes away. But maybe the bad things go away too,
Or maybe maybe she can do something else, something I
didn't think of when I was making up this story. Pretend, Margaret,
if you're listening, remember you're the hero. I created. Heroes
save people, even if it means.
Speaker 1: The record in my hands was pulsing. It was me,
literally me, my existence pressed into vinyl grooves around us.
The mouth of reality was closing. The fountain existed in
a bubble of collapsing time. Real Margaret stood beside me,
her hand on my shoulder, the only solid thing keeping
me anchored. Whenever you choose, I'm here. You're not just
my imaginary friend anymore. You're real enough to make a
real choice. The entity spoke through the air, itself now
its voice, the sound of reality tearing.
Speaker 3: Lay the red gold hold child completely the pattern. We
could go. What you were in to me, my mouth,
my voice mard way into permanent it existence. If you've
created twenty two nine eggs. Can you give me the thirtieth?
Can you give me yourself?
Speaker 1: I looked at the record, my record in its grooves.
I could see everything, every word I'd spoken that became horror,
every person I'd transformed, every piece of reality I'd infected
with fiction. What happens if I play it?
Speaker 3: If you can come fully real? Perhamly Meal no, no
longer avoid, but margaretly languid, colet and I can kill
you well were you speak through you? For forever? The
thirty was locked into the lace. There's this entire realitity.
It good Cosband's story it to tale.
Speaker 1: Don't listen. There's another way. Eight year old me was
smarter than that. She wouldn't create a problem without a
solution real. Margaret pulled out another piece of paper, another
childhood drawing. This one showed the record player, but it
was drawn wrong, the needle going backward, playing from the
inside out instead of outside in play it backward, unplay yourself,
speak everything in reverse, every horror, every death, every transformation,
Take it all back.
Speaker 3: If you, if you lay yourself, it was this entirely,
not not even avoid, just not nothing, not all your
lasts all went until night rst. They theyven covering Real permanently,
though thou lu succeeding on them. They see solidify Mill, Mill, Brooke,
Drudgerrouss forever.
Speaker 1: I was trapped between two impossibilities. Play the record forward
and become the entity's permanent vessel, play it backward and
erase myself while dooming the town. But then I noticed
something on the record label. Words that hadn't been there before,
written in a child's crayon. Or speak your own story. Wait,
I don't have to play the record at all? Do I?
I am the record? I can just speak. Yes, that's it.
You're not just the entity's mouth. You have your own voice.
Use it.
Speaker 3: No, you all or another thing. You are the sect
successfully you should be be You can get what really eate.
I'll hold you relay play through the record.
Speaker 1: The entity's pressure was crushing my hand moved toward the
record player against my will, but real Margaret grabbed my
other hand. Remember who you are. You're the hero of
a scared little girl's story, the brave one who faces
the monsters so she doesn't have to. You're not nothing,
You're everything she wished she could be. I stood at
the fountain's edge, holding my existence in my hands. Around us,
reality was collapsing into the entity's mouth, buildings dissolving, people
becoming suggestions, the world turning into draft notes for something worse.
I had to choose, but not between the entities options.
I had to choose my own ending. I choose ch
choose nothing.
Speaker 3: You are, nothing, you you care not.
Speaker 1: I choose to be Margaret Blackwood, not the real one,
not the void, but the story, the good story, the
one where the librarian saves everyone. I dropped the record
into the fountain, think into water. That was every October
at once. But I didn't play it. I didn't break it.
I let it sink, let it exist, unplayed potential but
not actual.
Speaker 3: What are you doing? What are you to doing?
Speaker 1: I'm telling a different story, one where the monster doesn't win,
where the pattern breaks, where thirty souls don't have to die,
where a frightened little girl's imaginary friend becomes real enough
to save everyone. I began to speak, not the entity's words,
my own, the story I wanted to tell. Once upon
a time there was a town called Millbrook, and one October,
terrible things happened. But then they unhappened because someone chose
to tell a better story. With each word, I felt
myself solidifying, not becoming human, becoming story, becoming the narrative itself.
And as I became more story, the entity became less real.
Speaker 3: You lot, you are mine, You are my laugh.
Speaker 1: I was. But every mouth can choose what it speaks,
and I choose to speak salvation. The entity screamed, Reality convulsed,
the mouth of existence tried to swallow everything, but I
kept speaking, telling the story of how Millbrook survived, how
the pattern broke, how the horrors were unwritten. Tomorrow was Halloween. Tomorrow,
the final recording would play, not from Vinyl, but from me. Tomorrow,
I would speak the ending into existence, and it would
be a good ending, because that's what heroes do in
the stories that matter. They save everyone, even if it
cost them everything. Ghost Scary Stories is a production of
Caloroga 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