May 5, 2020 • 32 mins
The darkness reveals itself while Tara finds an escape.
Light House is a production of iHeartRadio and Bamfer Productions.
Chapter 3 features the voice of Aly Trasher
It was written and directed by Jeff Heimbuch, audio engineered and scored by Kori Celeste, assistant engineered by Alex Gona, and executive produced by Holly Frey
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Warning. This episode contains descriptions of domestic violence. Listener discretion
is advised. Lighthouse is a production of I Heart Radio
and Bamfor Productions. For six long years after the night
of my twelfth birthday, I lived in a constant state
of fear. After we opened the dark room, the man
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in the hat made more frequent appearances. He didn't visit
every night, but I was always afraid he would. I
tossed and turned in my bed, restless, afraid that every
creak of the settling house, every banging of the pipes,
every gust of wind outside was him coming for me.
On the nights he did come, the ritual was always
the same, his shadow blocking the tiny bit of light
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spilling into my room from under my door. He would
turn the knob, jiggling the handle, trying to open it.
When the lock prevented him from doing so, he tried
to force his way in, banging against it with such
force that I was sure he would tear from its frame.
I cried myself to sleep those nights, often curled up
with my sister by my side, eyes closed tight, slowly
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counting to five over and over again, wishing him away. However,
the man in the Hat was only the beginning. Though
his presence was often seen. He was nothing more than
a malevolent spirit that used us as ponds to unleash
something else upon our house that had long since been
sealed away. We did not realize it at the time,
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but when we opened the dark room, we freed something
from a prison that should not have been unlocked, something
that was set loose upon the halls of Lighthouse once again,
and we my family or its prey, pray that it
toyed with and tormented endlessly. For six long years. Lighthouse
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became my prison. The darkness that lived within its walls
had us in its grasp, and it wouldn't let us
go until it tore my family apart. Lighthouse Chapter three.
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Conditions in the house steadily declined over those six years,
not only mentally but also physically. The first time I
truly realized how bad things were getting was when I
was thirteen. Yes, the nightly torment from the man in
Hat was gnawing away at my nerves, and things we
set loose from the dark room were slowly beginning to
make their presence known. But things took a turn for
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the worse the first time my father hit my mother.
Since moving into Lighthouse, my father began to transform into
someone else. Though his initial hesitation about moving in went
unheard by my mother, it was beginning to become apparent
that it was for a good reason. He never shared
much about his childhood and his family home with us,
but it was clear that his time in the Lighthouse
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was not a pleasant one. Being surrounded by his past
memories of a place he once escaped but was now
trapped in again took a toll on him. Once we
settled into Lighthouse, he took a job at a local
factory that manufactured plastic products. With most of the inheritance
from my grandmother's passing now gone, used to pay off
their outstanding debts and for living expenses over the past years,
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we desperately needed money to survive again. How they had
dwindled away so much so quickly was lost to me
at the time, but my mother's lavish spending habits were
likely part of the problem. She only wanted the best
for our family, though, and now that she was finally
able to provide that, who can fault her for some
extravagant spending. It fell on my father, though, to pick
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up the slack, hence his job. A naturally thin man,
the job demanded a lot of physical labor that he
was just not suited for. But a job was a job,
and he took it in stride. Every day, he left
early in the morning before we awoke, and didn't come
home until after nightfall. All evenings and week ends used
to be reserved for family time. He now spent his
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free moments sitting in his study, staring at his old
family portrait hanging above the fireplace, drinking. He started to deteriorate,
and all the time alone in his study was not helping.
One evening, when dinner was ready, my mother called out
to him from the dining room. Leaney and I were
already seated, awaiting the oka to begin eating, but my
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mother insisted we wait for him. When he still didn't
respond after the second and third time, she stood up
to fetch him. Leny and I waited and waited and waited,
But then they're raised. Voices began to float down the
hall toward us. We couldn't quite make out what they
were saying, but as curiosity got the better of us,
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we both got out of our seats to see The
study door was cracked ajar, but we stayed out of sight.
We used the tiny crack between the door and the
wall so we could peek into the room without risk
of being spotted. What we saw was my father, still
slumped over in his chair, drink in hand, while my
mother stood over him. It was obvious from their body
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language and their voices that their conversation was heated and
my mother was upset. The exact specifics of what they
were saying have long been lost in my memory, but
what is forever etched there was the moment when my mother,
in an impassioned flash, knocked the drink out of my
father's hand. The sound of shattering last stunned both my
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sister and I as we froze as still as statues.
We watched intensely to see what would happen next. We
could see my father finally rise from his chair. As
my mother began to apologize, she was caught off mid
sentence by the unmistakable sound of flesh striking flesh. He
hit her so hard, the back of his hand connecting
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with her face, that she fell to the ground. The
sound echoed within the house, Hanging in the air for
what seemed like an eternity. The silence was only broken
by the gasp that escaped her lips. My father didn't
say anything else after that. He merely stared hard at her,
rubbing his old scar before sitting back down in his chair.
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My mother, stunned, slowly got back to her feet and
walked out, holding her face, where a red mark began
to form on her cheek. She didn't register our presence
as she stormed away towards her bedroom. Leaney took off
a few secon games later in the opposite direction, sobbing.
That night, I saw the dim glow from atop the
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lighthouse again, the first time since the night we had
moved in. I watched it from my bed and fell
asleep while wondering what it was. While the opening of
the dark room may have set the darkness loose upon
the house, what my father did to my mother emboldened it.
The man in the hat had friends, and they wanted
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to make themselves known. The first did so in a
most unexpected way. During one of my many many sleepless nights,
I laid in bed staring at the ceiling. Thankfully, the
man in the hat did not pay a visit that evening,
but something far worse did. As I tossed and turned,
I heard the music box in Lini's room begin to play.
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What was once a comforting sound for me had since
turned into a waking nightmare. I found that the haunting
melody was often a precursor to a visit from the
man in the Hat. With the music wafting from my
sister's room into mine, I decided I was in no
mood to listen to his assault of my doorstep that night. Instead,
I opted to do something I started a few weeks prior.
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I gathered my blanket and pillow, opened my balcony doors,
and created a makeshift bed out there. My hope was
always that the night air would drown out the cacophony
of noise caused by the man in the Hat, and
while that theory didn't always work, being out there did
calm my nerves a bit. As I stepped out on
to the balcony, I felt an immediate chill run through
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me as wind from the ocean blew in my direction.
I didn't mind, just held my night gown around me
closer to fight some of it off. The dark shape
of the lighthouse loomed in the distance. The glow not
making an appearance. That night, clouds blanketed the sky, allowing
only small slivers of light to touch the ground. In
these small patches of moonlight, I could see our vast
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yard stretching out in all directions. I leaned against the
railing and I breathed in the cold air, stinging my lungs.
For a moment, it was quiet outside, more so than usual.
Crickets usually saying their symphony by this time, helping me
to block out other noise, But this night was devoid
of life. I thought nothing of it, though, just glad
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to be out of the house for a few brief moments.
As my eyes adjusted to the dark, they fell upon
the red oak tree. I wondered how long it had
been there. It's massive and gnarled branches sprung off in
many directions, creating its own labyrinth maze of limbs. As
another soft gust of wind blew, I noticed an odd shape,
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something I had never seen before, swaying among the shadows
of the tree. I assumed it was a dead branch,
hanging on its last vestiges of life, soon to become
another stick in the yard. The clouds above shifted, allowing
more moonlight to shine through, and the shadowy thing came
into a clearer view. It was a body hanging from
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the trees limbs. I stumbled backwards, shocked by the sight.
I tried to turn away, but my eyes would not
listen to my brain. Instead, they continued to stare as
every gruesome detail came into focus. An old knotted noose
was wrapped around its neck. The body swayed in the
light breeze as I could see that the clothing was
nearly unrecognizable, rotted away, as if he had been hanging
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there for some time. The flesh peeking out from behind
it hung loosely, giving it a sickly appearance. Thankfully, I
burn up bag covered the face, saving me from seeing
anything worse. I could only imagine the face decomposed over time,
the empty eye sockets burning in whatever direction they faced.
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I saw the head begin to turn in my direction.
It was too much for me to bear. I quickly
ran back into my bedroom and closed the balcony doors
as fast as I could. I jumped into my bed,
and I pulled the covers over me. When I did
finally sleep, I had a nightmare about its dead lifeless
eye is trying to see through the gaps in the
burlap to catch a glimpse of me, before somehow cutting
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itself loose and hurrying down the tree to get me.
I never used that balcony at night again. Lighthouse will
return after these messages, and now back to lighthouse. As
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my father began to drink more and more over the years,
the beatings he laid upon my mother got worse. What
started as a slap across the face here and they
are soon turned into a black eye or a broken limb.
Though these things were never done. When Leaney and I
were present, we often saw the immediate aftermath. Sometimes one
of us would come across her, laying at his feet,
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victim to a recent strike. Other Times it would be
her hiding her injury as best as she could, though
we could always see right through her reception. He never
struck us like he did her, but we felt his
wrath in other ways, mostly when he yelled. His temper
became short, and his tolerance for his family grew thinner
by the day. The smallest thing would irritate him, sending
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him into a tailspin of anger that resulted in us
running off to cry. As these instances increased, my sister
began to change, not in the prepubescent sense that everyone
goes through, but in mannerism send the way she held herself.
She used to run into my father's arms when he
came home from work, anxious to tell him about her day.
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Now she ran in the opposite direction, often hiding somewhere
in the house for hours before making an appearance again.
It was months before I discovered her secret hideaway, and
I was shocked when I realized where it was. It
was late one summer afternoon and I was hungry, so
I went to check the pantry for snack. To my surprise,
I found the basement door open. A bit worried, I
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started to close it when I heard a voice make
its way up from its depths. It sounded suspiciously like Lini.
I hadn't been down there since we discovered the dark room,
but I was a bit worried that if it was Lini,
she could be in trouble. Against my better judgment, I
crept down a few steps and looked into the basement.
The light was on down there, so I assumed that
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one of my parents had replaced the burnt out bulb
At some point. I listened intently again, and there was
no mistake. Leoni was down there somewhere. I made my
way through the basement carefully, even though the light was
shining bright. My previous experience was not one I wanted
to relive. I followed the sound of her voice as
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I continued to get closer. It sounded as if she
was talking to someone. What did you use it for?
I heard her ask. I stopped and tried to listen
for a response. Instead, she started giggling. A few seconds later,
my heart dropped as I turned a corner and realized
where her voice was coming from the dark room. I
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hurriedly walked to the small doorway to find Lini sitting
cross legged on the floor, facing the back wall under
the glowing red light. Lini, I called out, startling her
and immediately feeling bad about it. She turned toward me
and smiled. Dara. She squealed, did you come to play too?
What are you doing down here? I asked her. It's dangerous. No,
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it's not, she told me matter of factly. I always
come down here now, it's my secret spot. I was
surprised by this, of course, because I had avoided the
dark room and the entire basement since the day we
found it. I was under the assumption that she did
as well. I pushed the memory of my first and
only visit out of my head for now, though, for
fear of conjuring any unwanted attention. While I was down
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there still, Who are you talking to, Lini? Oh, it's
my friend, Abigail, she said. My heart dropped and my
blood ran cold. There was no one else with her
but an old, dirty, teddy bear. When she held out
to me in greeting, I immediately recognized it as the
one that once sat on the top shelf in this
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very room when we first opened the door. It was
too far out of reach for either of us to grab.
Then I silently wondered how Leni got her hands on it,
and also wondered if that is who she meant as Abigail.
The implications of her making a new friend down in
the dark room were too much for me to comprehend
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in that small, darkened space at the moment. Very nice
to meet you, I stammered, starting to feel a bit dizzy.
A familiar feeling of unease washed over me. And look
what she found, Lenie exclaimed, as she showed me something else.
It took a moment for it to register in my brain,
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but she held an old hunting knife in her hand.
My eyes grew wide, and I quickly snatched it away
from her. Lee that's dangerous. It's not a toy. You
shouldn't be playing with that. Sorry, she said, looking sheepishly
at the floor. Abigail said it was okay. The dizziness
was getting worse, and this Abigail was making me nervous.
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Who was she and why was LINI treating the teddy
bear like a person? Regardless, this was not the place
to discuss it. Come back upstairs, please, I told her,
we have chores. That was a lie, but I had
to get out of there, and the thought of leaving
her alone in the dark room was not one I
was going to entertain. Reluctantly, she got up, brushed the
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dirt off her dress, and grabbed the teddy Bear. Come along, Abigail,
she said, moving past me into the basement. Before I followed,
I took the knife I had taken from her and
looked for a good hiding spot for it. Taking a
quick glance under the bench, I saw a small alcove
in there, one that someone wouldn't normally see unless they
were looking for it. I placed the knife there, hopeful
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that it would be enough to keep it out of
Linie's hands. I took one last look inside the dark
room before reaching for the chain and turning off the
red light. I couldn't get out of the basement fast enough.
H Lighthouse were returned after a word from our sponsors,
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and now Lighthouse continues. Despite my protests, Lenie began to
spend more and more time in the dark room. Her
own bedroom was often neglected in favor of it, and,
much like my father with the study, she would disappear
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for hours at a time down there. Her continued insistence
on playing with this Abigail was worrisome for me, but
my mother didn't seem to mind. In fact, if Lenie
was occupied elsewhere, that meant less work my mother had
to do. It also meant more time for her to
be alone with her thoughts, which in turn left me
alone with my own. The man in the hat, the
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person hanging from the tree, Abigail, all of them were
just a small portion of the things I saw lurking
in Lighthouse. There were so many more things I saw
once or twice, things I only caught the briefest of
glimpses of things that were almost as common as the
man in the hat. One of those things was the
maid in the kitchen. I often saw her hurrying herself
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in there, perhaps preparing phantom meals. Dressed in a simple
black dress with a small ornamental apron. She only registered
my presence once, when I bumped the table and knocked
a fork from its place setting. She turned to me
as I saw tears of blood staining her porcelain cheeks.
There was also the servant in one of the spare
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bedrooms upstairs, wearing dark gray trousers a high buttoned black
coat with a dark tie. He busied himself with keeping
the room tidy, awaiting orders from the master of the house.
There was a rust colored stain that spread on the
back of his coat as he worked. An old sailor,
likely a pirate from the early days of sailing along
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the bluff, occasionally made appearances on the grounds. That gaping
hole where his right eye socket used to be dominated
by his face. In the attic, there was an old
woman who sat in a darkened corner, rocking back and
forth in her chair, her face covered in a shawl.
She didn't do anything else but sit there day in
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day out. Whenever I saw her, there was a man
with some sort of file, maybe a doctor, paying attention
to her comings and goings, writing down notes about what
he was observing. There's a little boy often seen outside
on the grounds, who moved with an unnatural gait and
whose teeth never stopped chattering. Not all of the entities
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made their physical presence known. Some of them were content
to open doors and cabinets, move valuable objects to different places,
and just generally cause unseen havoc. And Lighthouse one waited
until the dark early hours of the night to whisper
indiscernible words to me in a chorus of gentle saying
song voices from the events. There were many things slowly
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tormenting us in Lighthouse, but none of them were as
terrifying as the shadowy thing. Whatever it was, I had
never actually seen its full form. I named it for
its black, shadowy shape that kept its form nebulous, often
appearing just out of the corner of my eyesight, but
making it known that it was present. I was certain
it was the very same thing that chased us from
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the dark room on the day we opened it, less
person and more thing. I came to think of it
as the very darkness living in the heart of lighthouse.
I mean it quite literally when I say it was
living within the walls of the house. I sometimes saw
it slithering behind the wallpaper, a bulging shape protruding from
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the hallway, giving the appearance that the house itself was alive.
I tried to avoid it at all costs, especially after
the night I saw it with my father. Unlike the
rest of my family, I didn't try to avoid him
like they did. Despite his temper, I made a concentrated
effort to try to keep connected, to make sure he
knew that I was there for him and that he
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was loved. One relatively calm evening, where I had gone
an entire day without seeing or hearing from one of
the many inhabitants of the house, I had an uneasy
feeling that I was overdue for a visit. As my
bedside clock struck three am, I realized how right I
was when the whispering voices began to call out from
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my vend again. I tried not to listen to their
hushed words, But sometimes the more you try to block
something out the more your brain allows it. In this time,
instead of just words, I could not make out, there
was something else coming through the cacophony. They were calling
out my name. I was immobilized because this was the
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first time that anything had addressed me by my name.
It knew who I was. My fear overtook me, and
every rational part of my brain told me to stay
where I was, But my body was not my own.
Then it was in some sort of trance against my will.
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I found my legs swinging over the edge of my
bed and then walking along the floor outside my bedroom.
I supposed, despite all my terror, the lizard part of
my brain could not resist the call of whatever it
was out in the hall. It continued, much like the
music box. I followed it down the stairs and onto
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the first floor of the house. It beckoned me, the
voice drawing me towards my father's study. As I got closer,
I found the door jar again, the light spilling into
the hallway like a beacon night. The closer I got
to the door, the more my anxiety grew. My footsteps
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slowed as another part of my brain was fighting against
whatever was calling out to me in that room. But
it was too late. I was too close to the doorway,
and I had no choice but to give into my
instincts and look inside. Was a scene I had laid
eyes on many times before. My father sat in his
favorite chair in front of the fireplace and family portrait,
with his back towards me. In his hand was a
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glass of whiskey, with a nearly empty bottle sitting on
a table nearby. But as my eyes grew accustomed to
the bright light of the room, there was a dark
spot in my vision that refused to go away, a
shadow that was cast in the room by an unseen object.
My brain tried to make sense of it, but there
was no sense to be had, because this was not
something that human eyes were meant to see. It wasn't
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a trick of the light. It was a piece of
living darkness that had lodged itself in the middle of
the room, sucking all the light and life away from
where it stood. The shadowy things stood tall over my
father and leaned in close, whispering to him. But these
whispers were not the same ones that lured me here.
These whispers were dark and full of malice. Whatever brought
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me here, it wasn't one and the same. Whatever it was,
it wanted me to see this. It wanted me to
see this malicious thing leaching into my father and filling
his head with dark thoughts. It wanted to show me
what was happening. I took a step back, and a
floorboard creaked. Almost immediately, the shadowy thing turned its rough
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approximation of a head toward me, hissing in anger. My
father sat unmoving as the shadow coiled itself up like
a compressed spring and then leapt in my direction. I
took off at full run, my trance broken, and made
for the stairs. I could hear it behind me, hissing
and fury because I had interrupted its carefully planned interaction
with my father. When I reached the top of the stairs,
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I chanced to look over my shoulder, only to see
the darkened creature wrapping its slithering form around the banister
as it raced up after me. A dark appendage reached
out to grab me and just barely gray my arm.
As I picked up speed, I ran down the hallway
toward my bedroom, the shadow jumping from the stairs to
the walls, its form bulging from the wallpaper, scurring beneath
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it like an oversized cockroach. I didn't let up until
I was back within the safety of my room, slamming
the door shut behind me. I thought myself safe. For
a moment, I was. It slammed into my door, forcing
me away from it and down to my knees. As
I crawled across the floor backwards, the shadowy thing wasted
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no time in trying to get through my door, the
wood distending inward towards me in an unnatural way. It
seeped out of the wood, forming its black in shape
in the middle of my room, its form becoming less
nebulous and more beast like. It hissed and ungodly sound
as I screamed and it swirled around me. It covered
me in its darkness, the blackest black that I had
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ever seen. As it felt I was no longer within
my room, but within a dark, never ending void of
her I screamed and screamed and screamed, but the world
was gone, and all that was left was me and
the everlasting darkness. I awoke the next day in my bed,
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my body drenched in sweat and my energy depleted. I
didn't leave my room for three days. But worse was
that I didn't know what was scarier the fact that
the thing attacked me, or that no one seemed to notice.
I was confined to my bed for so long. My
father stayed in his study whatever dark secrets that thing
whispered to him in casing his mind. My mother, beaten
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down by my father both physically and mentally, was not
even aware. And my sister, my little LENI, was too
busy spending her days in the dark room to know
that her sister needed her. I do not know what
the shadowy thing did to me, but I knew after
that moment I had to do everything in my power
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to leave Lighthouse. And when I was eighteen, I finally
got my chance. Desperate to start my own life out
from under the oppressing nature of the house and my family,
I applied for college. He was on a whim at
the encouragement of my guidance counsel or at school, who
saw potential in me. I had taken quite a few
photography classes during my high school career, and the camera
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I found in the dark room helped me along in
that I used it sparingly, never developing the film I
had used since I was too afraid to use the room.
But once I realized that technology had evolved drastically since
that camera was made. I began to use ones that
the school had on hand. Recognizing a talent in me
and an eye for photography, Mrs Brown all but forced
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me to apply for program. I didn't tell my parents
at first because I knew how the conversation would go.
Money was tight and we couldn't afford to send me away,
especially since my father had an incident at the factory
the year before which left him unable to work. He
was currently on disability and spent his days in his
rual spot in the study. But when I was accepted
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and the prospect of being somewhere else grew more real
I formulated a plan. I saved my own money from
working at the local grocer over the past few years,
and researched bank loans. I was confident I would be
able to do it on my own, and now that
I was eighteen, I realized I didn't need their blessing.
I was an adult. I had the ability to make
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my own decisions, make my own way, and despite whatever
they said, I was leaving. In a rare instance where
I was able to get my father out of his study,
I sat both him and my mother down to present
my plans. When I was done, my father merely grumbled
something that sounded like don't expect any help from me,
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and left the room. But my mother, I could tell
by looking in her eyes that she was heartbroken. Though
the years had not been kind to her and she
was a mere shell of the strong, confident woman she was,
she was still my mother, and she loved me dearly.
The thought of her firstborn moving away out from under
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her supposed protective wing was devastating, but deep inside I
think she saw it for exactly what it was, an escape.
Three weeks later, I found myself climbing into a taxicab,
two suitcases full of belongings in the trunk, ready to
start my new life. The time flew by in a heartbeat,
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and though I tried my best to spend those last
few days with my family to regain some semblance of
what we once were, things were just not the same.
A part of me felt pained pain that I was
leaving my family, especially leaning in an unsafe situation. I
don't know why, but I had fared better than all
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of them by not falling into the clutches of lighthouse
and yet a part of me felt bad because of that.
I tried my very best to help them climb out
of that hole, but they just seemed to dig themselves
deeper despite my best efforts. My father did not acknowledge
my goodbye. I couldn't tell if my mother's tears were
of joy or sadness. And Leni, well, our relationship had
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declined since she found a friend in Abiil. She wasn't
fond of my leaving, so she hit away and refused
to accept it. A soft rain began to fall as
I closed the taxis door, the droplets creating a hazy
view of lighthouse. As the driver began to pull away,
I looked through the rear window one last look at
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the place I had called home for six years. How
stood out among the dark clouds, the lighthouse looming in
the distance like a guardian keeping watch. Regardless of all
its ups and downs, it was still home. Leni appeared
on the porch, teddy Bear in hand, staring at me
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as the cab made its way down the driveway. A
sad smile formed on her face as she raised her
hand goodbye. I waked back, matching her sad smile with
my own. In a sudden flash of lightning, the Teddy
Bear was gone, replaced by another figure at Leaney's side.
In my rapidly shrinking view of the porch, I could
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see that whomever it was was younger than Leaney, closer
to eight years old, wearing a pale blue dress and pigtails.
Her eyes stared hard at me as I tried to
make sense of what I was seeing. This figure was Abigail,
and the smile she gave me chilled me to the
very core Lighthouse is a production of I Heart Radio
(32:04):
and Bamford Productions. Chapter three featured the voice of Ali Trasher,
written and directed by Jeff Himbuck audio engineering, an original
musical score by Corey Celeste. Production assistance by Alex Gona.
Executive produced by Holly Fry. Questions comments, you can reach
(32:25):
us at the Man in the Hat is Watching at
gmail dot com. Thank you for listening.
Warning. This episode contains descriptions of domestic violence. Listener discretion
is advised. Lighthouse is a production of I Heart Radio
and Bamfor Productions. For six long years after the night
of my twelfth birthday, I lived in a constant state
of fear. After we opened the dark room, the man
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in the hat made more frequent appearances. He didn't visit
every night, but I was always afraid he would. I
tossed and turned in my bed, restless, afraid that every
creak of the settling house, every banging of the pipes,
every gust of wind outside was him coming for me.
On the nights he did come, the ritual was always
the same, his shadow blocking the tiny bit of light
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spilling into my room from under my door. He would
turn the knob, jiggling the handle, trying to open it.
When the lock prevented him from doing so, he tried
to force his way in, banging against it with such
force that I was sure he would tear from its frame.
I cried myself to sleep those nights, often curled up
with my sister by my side, eyes closed tight, slowly
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counting to five over and over again, wishing him away. However,
the man in the Hat was only the beginning. Though
his presence was often seen. He was nothing more than
a malevolent spirit that used us as ponds to unleash
something else upon our house that had long since been
sealed away. We did not realize it at the time,
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but when we opened the dark room, we freed something
from a prison that should not have been unlocked, something
that was set loose upon the halls of Lighthouse once again,
and we my family or its prey, pray that it
toyed with and tormented endlessly. For six long years. Lighthouse
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became my prison. The darkness that lived within its walls
had us in its grasp, and it wouldn't let us
go until it tore my family apart. Lighthouse Chapter three.
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Conditions in the house steadily declined over those six years,
not only mentally but also physically. The first time I
truly realized how bad things were getting was when I
was thirteen. Yes, the nightly torment from the man in
Hat was gnawing away at my nerves, and things we
set loose from the dark room were slowly beginning to
make their presence known. But things took a turn for
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the worse the first time my father hit my mother.
Since moving into Lighthouse, my father began to transform into
someone else. Though his initial hesitation about moving in went
unheard by my mother, it was beginning to become apparent
that it was for a good reason. He never shared
much about his childhood and his family home with us,
but it was clear that his time in the Lighthouse
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was not a pleasant one. Being surrounded by his past
memories of a place he once escaped but was now
trapped in again took a toll on him. Once we
settled into Lighthouse, he took a job at a local
factory that manufactured plastic products. With most of the inheritance
from my grandmother's passing now gone, used to pay off
their outstanding debts and for living expenses over the past years,
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we desperately needed money to survive again. How they had
dwindled away so much so quickly was lost to me
at the time, but my mother's lavish spending habits were
likely part of the problem. She only wanted the best
for our family, though, and now that she was finally
able to provide that, who can fault her for some
extravagant spending. It fell on my father, though, to pick
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up the slack, hence his job. A naturally thin man,
the job demanded a lot of physical labor that he
was just not suited for. But a job was a job,
and he took it in stride. Every day, he left
early in the morning before we awoke, and didn't come
home until after nightfall. All evenings and week ends used
to be reserved for family time. He now spent his
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free moments sitting in his study, staring at his old
family portrait hanging above the fireplace, drinking. He started to deteriorate,
and all the time alone in his study was not helping.
One evening, when dinner was ready, my mother called out
to him from the dining room. Leaney and I were
already seated, awaiting the oka to begin eating, but my
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mother insisted we wait for him. When he still didn't
respond after the second and third time, she stood up
to fetch him. Leny and I waited and waited and waited,
But then they're raised. Voices began to float down the
hall toward us. We couldn't quite make out what they
were saying, but as curiosity got the better of us,
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we both got out of our seats to see The
study door was cracked ajar, but we stayed out of sight.
We used the tiny crack between the door and the
wall so we could peek into the room without risk
of being spotted. What we saw was my father, still
slumped over in his chair, drink in hand, while my
mother stood over him. It was obvious from their body
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language and their voices that their conversation was heated and
my mother was upset. The exact specifics of what they
were saying have long been lost in my memory, but
what is forever etched there was the moment when my mother,
in an impassioned flash, knocked the drink out of my
father's hand. The sound of shattering last stunned both my
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sister and I as we froze as still as statues.
We watched intensely to see what would happen next. We
could see my father finally rise from his chair. As
my mother began to apologize, she was caught off mid
sentence by the unmistakable sound of flesh striking flesh. He
hit her so hard, the back of his hand connecting
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with her face, that she fell to the ground. The
sound echoed within the house, Hanging in the air for
what seemed like an eternity. The silence was only broken
by the gasp that escaped her lips. My father didn't
say anything else after that. He merely stared hard at her,
rubbing his old scar before sitting back down in his chair.
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My mother, stunned, slowly got back to her feet and
walked out, holding her face, where a red mark began
to form on her cheek. She didn't register our presence
as she stormed away towards her bedroom. Leaney took off
a few secon games later in the opposite direction, sobbing.
That night, I saw the dim glow from atop the
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lighthouse again, the first time since the night we had
moved in. I watched it from my bed and fell
asleep while wondering what it was. While the opening of
the dark room may have set the darkness loose upon
the house, what my father did to my mother emboldened it.
The man in the hat had friends, and they wanted
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to make themselves known. The first did so in a
most unexpected way. During one of my many many sleepless nights,
I laid in bed staring at the ceiling. Thankfully, the
man in the hat did not pay a visit that evening,
but something far worse did. As I tossed and turned,
I heard the music box in Lini's room begin to play.
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What was once a comforting sound for me had since
turned into a waking nightmare. I found that the haunting
melody was often a precursor to a visit from the
man in the Hat. With the music wafting from my
sister's room into mine, I decided I was in no
mood to listen to his assault of my doorstep that night. Instead,
I opted to do something I started a few weeks prior.
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I gathered my blanket and pillow, opened my balcony doors,
and created a makeshift bed out there. My hope was
always that the night air would drown out the cacophony
of noise caused by the man in the Hat, and
while that theory didn't always work, being out there did
calm my nerves a bit. As I stepped out on
to the balcony, I felt an immediate chill run through
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me as wind from the ocean blew in my direction.
I didn't mind, just held my night gown around me
closer to fight some of it off. The dark shape
of the lighthouse loomed in the distance. The glow not
making an appearance. That night, clouds blanketed the sky, allowing
only small slivers of light to touch the ground. In
these small patches of moonlight, I could see our vast
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yard stretching out in all directions. I leaned against the
railing and I breathed in the cold air, stinging my lungs.
For a moment, it was quiet outside, more so than usual.
Crickets usually saying their symphony by this time, helping me
to block out other noise, But this night was devoid
of life. I thought nothing of it, though, just glad
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to be out of the house for a few brief moments.
As my eyes adjusted to the dark, they fell upon
the red oak tree. I wondered how long it had
been there. It's massive and gnarled branches sprung off in
many directions, creating its own labyrinth maze of limbs. As
another soft gust of wind blew, I noticed an odd shape,
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something I had never seen before, swaying among the shadows
of the tree. I assumed it was a dead branch,
hanging on its last vestiges of life, soon to become
another stick in the yard. The clouds above shifted, allowing
more moonlight to shine through, and the shadowy thing came
into a clearer view. It was a body hanging from
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the trees limbs. I stumbled backwards, shocked by the sight.
I tried to turn away, but my eyes would not
listen to my brain. Instead, they continued to stare as
every gruesome detail came into focus. An old knotted noose
was wrapped around its neck. The body swayed in the
light breeze as I could see that the clothing was
nearly unrecognizable, rotted away, as if he had been hanging
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there for some time. The flesh peeking out from behind
it hung loosely, giving it a sickly appearance. Thankfully, I
burn up bag covered the face, saving me from seeing
anything worse. I could only imagine the face decomposed over time,
the empty eye sockets burning in whatever direction they faced.
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I saw the head begin to turn in my direction.
It was too much for me to bear. I quickly
ran back into my bedroom and closed the balcony doors
as fast as I could. I jumped into my bed,
and I pulled the covers over me. When I did
finally sleep, I had a nightmare about its dead lifeless
eye is trying to see through the gaps in the
burlap to catch a glimpse of me, before somehow cutting
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itself loose and hurrying down the tree to get me.
I never used that balcony at night again. Lighthouse will
return after these messages, and now back to lighthouse. As
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my father began to drink more and more over the years,
the beatings he laid upon my mother got worse. What
started as a slap across the face here and they
are soon turned into a black eye or a broken limb.
Though these things were never done. When Leaney and I
were present, we often saw the immediate aftermath. Sometimes one
of us would come across her, laying at his feet,
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victim to a recent strike. Other Times it would be
her hiding her injury as best as she could, though
we could always see right through her reception. He never
struck us like he did her, but we felt his
wrath in other ways, mostly when he yelled. His temper
became short, and his tolerance for his family grew thinner
by the day. The smallest thing would irritate him, sending
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him into a tailspin of anger that resulted in us
running off to cry. As these instances increased, my sister
began to change, not in the prepubescent sense that everyone
goes through, but in mannerism send the way she held herself.
She used to run into my father's arms when he
came home from work, anxious to tell him about her day.
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Now she ran in the opposite direction, often hiding somewhere
in the house for hours before making an appearance again.
It was months before I discovered her secret hideaway, and
I was shocked when I realized where it was. It
was late one summer afternoon and I was hungry, so
I went to check the pantry for snack. To my surprise,
I found the basement door open. A bit worried, I
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started to close it when I heard a voice make
its way up from its depths. It sounded suspiciously like Lini.
I hadn't been down there since we discovered the dark room,
but I was a bit worried that if it was Lini,
she could be in trouble. Against my better judgment, I
crept down a few steps and looked into the basement.
The light was on down there, so I assumed that
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one of my parents had replaced the burnt out bulb
At some point. I listened intently again, and there was
no mistake. Leoni was down there somewhere. I made my
way through the basement carefully, even though the light was
shining bright. My previous experience was not one I wanted
to relive. I followed the sound of her voice as
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I continued to get closer. It sounded as if she
was talking to someone. What did you use it for?
I heard her ask. I stopped and tried to listen
for a response. Instead, she started giggling. A few seconds later,
my heart dropped as I turned a corner and realized
where her voice was coming from the dark room. I
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hurriedly walked to the small doorway to find Lini sitting
cross legged on the floor, facing the back wall under
the glowing red light. Lini, I called out, startling her
and immediately feeling bad about it. She turned toward me
and smiled. Dara. She squealed, did you come to play too?
What are you doing down here? I asked her. It's dangerous. No,
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it's not, she told me matter of factly. I always
come down here now, it's my secret spot. I was
surprised by this, of course, because I had avoided the
dark room and the entire basement since the day we
found it. I was under the assumption that she did
as well. I pushed the memory of my first and
only visit out of my head for now, though, for
fear of conjuring any unwanted attention. While I was down
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there still, Who are you talking to, Lini? Oh, it's
my friend, Abigail, she said. My heart dropped and my
blood ran cold. There was no one else with her
but an old, dirty, teddy bear. When she held out
to me in greeting, I immediately recognized it as the
one that once sat on the top shelf in this
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very room when we first opened the door. It was
too far out of reach for either of us to grab.
Then I silently wondered how Leni got her hands on it,
and also wondered if that is who she meant as Abigail.
The implications of her making a new friend down in
the dark room were too much for me to comprehend
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in that small, darkened space at the moment. Very nice
to meet you, I stammered, starting to feel a bit dizzy.
A familiar feeling of unease washed over me. And look
what she found, Lenie exclaimed, as she showed me something else.
It took a moment for it to register in my brain,
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but she held an old hunting knife in her hand.
My eyes grew wide, and I quickly snatched it away
from her. Lee that's dangerous. It's not a toy. You
shouldn't be playing with that. Sorry, she said, looking sheepishly
at the floor. Abigail said it was okay. The dizziness
was getting worse, and this Abigail was making me nervous.
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Who was she and why was LINI treating the teddy
bear like a person? Regardless, this was not the place
to discuss it. Come back upstairs, please, I told her,
we have chores. That was a lie, but I had
to get out of there, and the thought of leaving
her alone in the dark room was not one I
was going to entertain. Reluctantly, she got up, brushed the
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dirt off her dress, and grabbed the teddy Bear. Come along, Abigail,
she said, moving past me into the basement. Before I followed,
I took the knife I had taken from her and
looked for a good hiding spot for it. Taking a
quick glance under the bench, I saw a small alcove
in there, one that someone wouldn't normally see unless they
were looking for it. I placed the knife there, hopeful
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that it would be enough to keep it out of
Linie's hands. I took one last look inside the dark
room before reaching for the chain and turning off the
red light. I couldn't get out of the basement fast enough.
H Lighthouse were returned after a word from our sponsors,
(17:11):
and now Lighthouse continues. Despite my protests, Lenie began to
spend more and more time in the dark room. Her
own bedroom was often neglected in favor of it, and,
much like my father with the study, she would disappear
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for hours at a time down there. Her continued insistence
on playing with this Abigail was worrisome for me, but
my mother didn't seem to mind. In fact, if Lenie
was occupied elsewhere, that meant less work my mother had
to do. It also meant more time for her to
be alone with her thoughts, which in turn left me
alone with my own. The man in the hat, the
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person hanging from the tree, Abigail, all of them were
just a small portion of the things I saw lurking
in Lighthouse. There were so many more things I saw
once or twice, things I only caught the briefest of
glimpses of things that were almost as common as the
man in the hat. One of those things was the
maid in the kitchen. I often saw her hurrying herself
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in there, perhaps preparing phantom meals. Dressed in a simple
black dress with a small ornamental apron. She only registered
my presence once, when I bumped the table and knocked
a fork from its place setting. She turned to me
as I saw tears of blood staining her porcelain cheeks.
There was also the servant in one of the spare
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bedrooms upstairs, wearing dark gray trousers a high buttoned black
coat with a dark tie. He busied himself with keeping
the room tidy, awaiting orders from the master of the house.
There was a rust colored stain that spread on the
back of his coat as he worked. An old sailor,
likely a pirate from the early days of sailing along
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the bluff, occasionally made appearances on the grounds. That gaping
hole where his right eye socket used to be dominated
by his face. In the attic, there was an old
woman who sat in a darkened corner, rocking back and
forth in her chair, her face covered in a shawl.
She didn't do anything else but sit there day in
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day out. Whenever I saw her, there was a man
with some sort of file, maybe a doctor, paying attention
to her comings and goings, writing down notes about what
he was observing. There's a little boy often seen outside
on the grounds, who moved with an unnatural gait and
whose teeth never stopped chattering. Not all of the entities
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made their physical presence known. Some of them were content
to open doors and cabinets, move valuable objects to different places,
and just generally cause unseen havoc. And Lighthouse one waited
until the dark early hours of the night to whisper
indiscernible words to me in a chorus of gentle saying
song voices from the events. There were many things slowly
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tormenting us in Lighthouse, but none of them were as
terrifying as the shadowy thing. Whatever it was, I had
never actually seen its full form. I named it for
its black, shadowy shape that kept its form nebulous, often
appearing just out of the corner of my eyesight, but
making it known that it was present. I was certain
it was the very same thing that chased us from
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the dark room on the day we opened it, less
person and more thing. I came to think of it
as the very darkness living in the heart of lighthouse.
I mean it quite literally when I say it was
living within the walls of the house. I sometimes saw
it slithering behind the wallpaper, a bulging shape protruding from
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the hallway, giving the appearance that the house itself was alive.
I tried to avoid it at all costs, especially after
the night I saw it with my father. Unlike the
rest of my family, I didn't try to avoid him
like they did. Despite his temper, I made a concentrated
effort to try to keep connected, to make sure he
knew that I was there for him and that he
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was loved. One relatively calm evening, where I had gone
an entire day without seeing or hearing from one of
the many inhabitants of the house, I had an uneasy
feeling that I was overdue for a visit. As my
bedside clock struck three am, I realized how right I
was when the whispering voices began to call out from
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my vend again. I tried not to listen to their
hushed words, But sometimes the more you try to block
something out the more your brain allows it. In this time,
instead of just words, I could not make out, there
was something else coming through the cacophony. They were calling
out my name. I was immobilized because this was the
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first time that anything had addressed me by my name.
It knew who I was. My fear overtook me, and
every rational part of my brain told me to stay
where I was, But my body was not my own.
Then it was in some sort of trance against my will.
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I found my legs swinging over the edge of my
bed and then walking along the floor outside my bedroom.
I supposed, despite all my terror, the lizard part of
my brain could not resist the call of whatever it
was out in the hall. It continued, much like the
music box. I followed it down the stairs and onto
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the first floor of the house. It beckoned me, the
voice drawing me towards my father's study. As I got closer,
I found the door jar again, the light spilling into
the hallway like a beacon night. The closer I got
to the door, the more my anxiety grew. My footsteps
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slowed as another part of my brain was fighting against
whatever was calling out to me in that room. But
it was too late. I was too close to the doorway,
and I had no choice but to give into my
instincts and look inside. Was a scene I had laid
eyes on many times before. My father sat in his
favorite chair in front of the fireplace and family portrait,
with his back towards me. In his hand was a
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glass of whiskey, with a nearly empty bottle sitting on
a table nearby. But as my eyes grew accustomed to
the bright light of the room, there was a dark
spot in my vision that refused to go away, a
shadow that was cast in the room by an unseen object.
My brain tried to make sense of it, but there
was no sense to be had, because this was not
something that human eyes were meant to see. It wasn't
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a trick of the light. It was a piece of
living darkness that had lodged itself in the middle of
the room, sucking all the light and life away from
where it stood. The shadowy things stood tall over my
father and leaned in close, whispering to him. But these
whispers were not the same ones that lured me here.
These whispers were dark and full of malice. Whatever brought
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me here, it wasn't one and the same. Whatever it was,
it wanted me to see this. It wanted me to
see this malicious thing leaching into my father and filling
his head with dark thoughts. It wanted to show me
what was happening. I took a step back, and a
floorboard creaked. Almost immediately, the shadowy thing turned its rough
(24:26):
approximation of a head toward me, hissing in anger. My
father sat unmoving as the shadow coiled itself up like
a compressed spring and then leapt in my direction. I
took off at full run, my trance broken, and made
for the stairs. I could hear it behind me, hissing
and fury because I had interrupted its carefully planned interaction
with my father. When I reached the top of the stairs,
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I chanced to look over my shoulder, only to see
the darkened creature wrapping its slithering form around the banister
as it raced up after me. A dark appendage reached
out to grab me and just barely gray my arm.
As I picked up speed, I ran down the hallway
toward my bedroom, the shadow jumping from the stairs to
the walls, its form bulging from the wallpaper, scurring beneath
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it like an oversized cockroach. I didn't let up until
I was back within the safety of my room, slamming
the door shut behind me. I thought myself safe. For
a moment, I was. It slammed into my door, forcing
me away from it and down to my knees. As
I crawled across the floor backwards, the shadowy thing wasted
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no time in trying to get through my door, the
wood distending inward towards me in an unnatural way. It
seeped out of the wood, forming its black in shape
in the middle of my room, its form becoming less
nebulous and more beast like. It hissed and ungodly sound
as I screamed and it swirled around me. It covered
me in its darkness, the blackest black that I had
(25:53):
ever seen. As it felt I was no longer within
my room, but within a dark, never ending void of
her I screamed and screamed and screamed, but the world
was gone, and all that was left was me and
the everlasting darkness. I awoke the next day in my bed,
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my body drenched in sweat and my energy depleted. I
didn't leave my room for three days. But worse was
that I didn't know what was scarier the fact that
the thing attacked me, or that no one seemed to notice.
I was confined to my bed for so long. My
father stayed in his study whatever dark secrets that thing
whispered to him in casing his mind. My mother, beaten
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down by my father both physically and mentally, was not
even aware. And my sister, my little LENI, was too
busy spending her days in the dark room to know
that her sister needed her. I do not know what
the shadowy thing did to me, but I knew after
that moment I had to do everything in my power
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to leave Lighthouse. And when I was eighteen, I finally
got my chance. Desperate to start my own life out
from under the oppressing nature of the house and my family,
I applied for college. He was on a whim at
the encouragement of my guidance counsel or at school, who
saw potential in me. I had taken quite a few
photography classes during my high school career, and the camera
(27:21):
I found in the dark room helped me along in
that I used it sparingly, never developing the film I
had used since I was too afraid to use the room.
But once I realized that technology had evolved drastically since
that camera was made. I began to use ones that
the school had on hand. Recognizing a talent in me
and an eye for photography, Mrs Brown all but forced
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me to apply for program. I didn't tell my parents
at first because I knew how the conversation would go.
Money was tight and we couldn't afford to send me away,
especially since my father had an incident at the factory
the year before which left him unable to work. He
was currently on disability and spent his days in his
rual spot in the study. But when I was accepted
(28:03):
and the prospect of being somewhere else grew more real
I formulated a plan. I saved my own money from
working at the local grocer over the past few years,
and researched bank loans. I was confident I would be
able to do it on my own, and now that
I was eighteen, I realized I didn't need their blessing.
I was an adult. I had the ability to make
(28:23):
my own decisions, make my own way, and despite whatever
they said, I was leaving. In a rare instance where
I was able to get my father out of his study,
I sat both him and my mother down to present
my plans. When I was done, my father merely grumbled
something that sounded like don't expect any help from me,
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and left the room. But my mother, I could tell
by looking in her eyes that she was heartbroken. Though
the years had not been kind to her and she
was a mere shell of the strong, confident woman she was,
she was still my mother, and she loved me dearly.
The thought of her firstborn moving away out from under
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her supposed protective wing was devastating, but deep inside I
think she saw it for exactly what it was, an escape.
Three weeks later, I found myself climbing into a taxicab,
two suitcases full of belongings in the trunk, ready to
start my new life. The time flew by in a heartbeat,
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and though I tried my best to spend those last
few days with my family to regain some semblance of
what we once were, things were just not the same.
A part of me felt pained pain that I was
leaving my family, especially leaning in an unsafe situation. I
don't know why, but I had fared better than all
(29:48):
of them by not falling into the clutches of lighthouse
and yet a part of me felt bad because of that.
I tried my very best to help them climb out
of that hole, but they just seemed to dig themselves
deeper despite my best efforts. My father did not acknowledge
my goodbye. I couldn't tell if my mother's tears were
of joy or sadness. And Leni, well, our relationship had
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declined since she found a friend in Abiil. She wasn't
fond of my leaving, so she hit away and refused
to accept it. A soft rain began to fall as
I closed the taxis door, the droplets creating a hazy
view of lighthouse. As the driver began to pull away,
I looked through the rear window one last look at
(30:36):
the place I had called home for six years. How
stood out among the dark clouds, the lighthouse looming in
the distance like a guardian keeping watch. Regardless of all
its ups and downs, it was still home. Leni appeared
on the porch, teddy Bear in hand, staring at me
(30:56):
as the cab made its way down the driveway. A
sad smile formed on her face as she raised her
hand goodbye. I waked back, matching her sad smile with
my own. In a sudden flash of lightning, the Teddy
Bear was gone, replaced by another figure at Leaney's side.
In my rapidly shrinking view of the porch, I could
(31:19):
see that whomever it was was younger than Leaney, closer
to eight years old, wearing a pale blue dress and pigtails.
Her eyes stared hard at me as I tried to
make sense of what I was seeing. This figure was Abigail,
and the smile she gave me chilled me to the
very core Lighthouse is a production of I Heart Radio
(32:04):
and Bamford Productions. Chapter three featured the voice of Ali Trasher,
written and directed by Jeff Himbuck audio engineering, an original
musical score by Corey Celeste. Production assistance by Alex Gona.
Executive produced by Holly Fry. Questions comments, you can reach
(32:25):
us at the Man in the Hat is Watching at
gmail dot com. Thank you for listening.
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