October 30, 2013 • 40 mins
It's Halloween, and Josh and Chuck are ready to creep you out with this year's spooky story, Algernon Blackwood's scary short story, The Empty House. Tune in, turn down the lights and prepare for chills to run down your spine as they read this classic bit of horror fiction.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the all new twenty fourteen Toyota Corolla.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles w Chuck Bryan. It's very spooky, It's Halloween, it's.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
This is the holiday episode, Christmas Holiday episode or my
favorite two of the year.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Yes, oh yeah, it's a tradition. Now I love tradition. Yeah, custom, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
You want to explain what we do each Halloween in
case people aren't in the know.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
We like to read a scary story for Halloween. The
first few years we read public domain scary stories HP Lovecraft,
Edgrell and Poe.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yeah so Chuck.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
If you remember last year we held a horror fiction contest.
Yeah yeah, and we came up with the winner. There
was a sweet sixteen you can actually go read them
on stuff youshould Know dot com. All sixteen of them
are awesome. And then we had like a leg wrestling
competition and the guy who came out on top was
Brett s Arnold with his really awesome story signed forever
(01:06):
and Ever.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah, thank you, strong Leg. Josh.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
I didn't like wrestle I just watched Oh that was
me and Tracy. Yeah you don't remember. This is awkward,
it's crazy, like Tracy was really fast. Yeah, and she
was strangely agitated too, like she really had something against you. Anyway,
Brette s Arnold one signed Forever and Ever. If you
haven't heard that, go back and listen to. It's very creepy.
Jerry did some excellent sound design. And then but this
(01:31):
year we are not holding another contest that way.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
No, No, even though it was great, that was a
lot of reading.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
That's right. And then this year we're back at it
reading a very scary short story from the early twentieth
century written by a writer named Algernon Blackwood who was fantastic.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah. You get a name like Algernon Blackwood and you
were born to write short story horror.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Exactly, or you're gonna found some like a church of
Satan or something like that.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, he probably tried both. He's a good writer, yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
More positive than you'd think.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, and this is a good one. Just to set
it up, it's about a haunted house and a couple
of people venturing through this haunted house. Yeah, and it's
creepy as age.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
It is so we're gonna get to it. Jerry's gonna
lay down the sound design and we're going to scare
the socks off of you. Happy Halloween to you guys.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Turn the lights down, and here we go with the
Empty House by Algernon Blackwood.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at
once their character for evil. In the case of the latter,
no particular feature need betray them. They may boast an
open countenance and an ingenuous smile, and yet a little
of their company leaves the unalterable conviction that there is
something radically amiss with their being, that they are evil
(02:59):
Willie Nil. They seem to communicate an atmosphere of secret
and wicked thoughts, which makes those in their immediate neighborhood
shrink from them, as from a thing diseased. And perhaps
with houses, the same principle as operative. And it is
the aroma of evil deeds committed under a particular roof,
long after the evil doers have passed away, that makes
(03:19):
the goose flesh come and the hair rise. Something of
the original passion of the evil doer, and of the
horror felt by his victim enters the heart of the
innocent watcher, and he becomes suddenly conscious of tingling nerves,
creeping skin, and a chilling of the blood. He is
terror stricken without apparent cause.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
There was manifestly nothing in the external appearance of this
particular house to bear out the tales of the horror
that was said to reign within. It was neither lonely
nor enkempt. It stood crowded into a corner of the
square and looked exactly like the houses on either side
of it. The same number of windows as its neighbors,
the same balcony overlooking the gardens, the same white steps
(04:05):
leading up to the heavy black front door, and in
the rear there was the same narrow strip of green
with neat box borders running up to the wall that
divided it from the backs of the adjoining houses. Apparently too,
the number of the chimney pots on the roof was
the same, the breadth and angle of the eaves, and
even the height of the dirty area railings. And yet
this house in the square that seemed precisely similar to
(04:27):
its fifty ugly neighbors, was a matter of fact, entirely different,
horribly different. Wherein lay this marked invisible difference is impossible
to say. It cannot be ascribed wholly to the imagination,
because persons who had spent some time in the house,
knowing nothing of the facts, had declared positively that certain
rooms were so disagreeable they would rather die than enter
(04:50):
them again, and that the atmosphere of the whole house
produced in them symptoms of a genuine terror. While the
series of innocent tenants who had tried to live in
it had been forced to DeCamp at the shortest possible notice,
was indeed little less than a scandal of the town.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
When Shorthouse arrived to pay a week end visit to
his aunt Julia and her house on the seafront at
the other end of the town, he found her charged
to the brim with mystery and excitement. He had only
received her telegram that morning, and he had come anticipating boredom.
But the moment he touched her hand and kissed her
apple skin wrinkled cheek, he caught the first wave of
(05:29):
her electrical condition. The impression deepened when he learned that
there were to be no other visitors, and that he
had been telegraphed for with a very special object. Something
was in the wind, and the something would doubtless bear fruit.
For this elderly spinster, Aunt with a mania for psychical research,
had brains as well as willpower, and by hook er
(05:50):
by crook she usually managed to accomplish her ends. The
revelation was made soon after tea, when she sidled close
up to him as they paced slowly along the sea
front in the dusk. I've got the keys, she announced,
in a delighted yet half awesome voice, got them till Monday.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
The keys of the bathing machine, or.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
He asked, innocently, looking from the sea to the town.
Nothing brought her so quickly to the point as feigning
stupidity Neither. She whispered, I've got the keys of the
haunted house in the square, and I'm going there to night.
Shorthouse was conscious of the slightest possible tremor down his back.
He dropped his teasing tone. Something in her voice and
(06:30):
manner thrilled him. She was in earnest.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
But you can't go alone.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
He began, That's why I wired for you, she said,
with decision.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
He turned to look at her. The ugly line enigmatical
face was alive with excitement. There was the glow of
genuine enthusiasm round it like a halo. The eye shone.
He caught another wave of her excitement, and a second trimmer,
more marked than the first, accompanied it. Thanks Aunt, Julia,
he said politely.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Thanks awfully, I should not dare to go quite alone.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
She went on, raising her voice.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
But with you, I should enjoy it immensely. You're afraid
of nothing, I know.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Thanks so much, he said again. Here is anything likely
to happen.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
A great deal has happened, she whispered, though it's been
most cleverly hushed up. Three tenants have come and gone
in the last few months, and the house is said
to be empty for good now.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
In spite of himself, Shorthouse became interested. His aunt was
so very much in earnest.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
The house is very old, indeed, she went on. And
the story, an unpleasant one, dates a long way back.
It has to do with a murder committed by a
jealous stableman who had some affair with the servant in
the house. One night, he managed to secrete himself in
the cellar, and when everyone was asleep, he crept upstairs
to the servants quarters, chased the girl down to the
(07:48):
next landing, and before anyone could come to the rescue.
Threw her bodily over the banisters into.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
The hall below, and the stableman was.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Caught, I believe, and hanged for murder. But it all
happened this century ago, and I've not been able to
get more details of this story. Shorthouse now felt his
interest thoroughly aroused, but though he was not particularly nervous
for himself, he hesitated a little on his aunt's account.
On one condition, he said, at length, nothing will prevent
my going. She said firmly, But I may as well
(08:19):
hear your condition.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
That you guarantee your power of self control if anything
really horrible happens. I mean that you are sure you
won't get too.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Frightened, Jim, she said scornfully. I'm not young, I know,
nor are my nerves. But with you I should be
afraid of nothing in the world. This, of course settled it.
For Shorthouse had no pretensions to being other than a
very ordinary young man, and an appeal to his vanity
was irresistible. He agreed to go instinctively. By a sort
(08:50):
of subconscious preparation. He kept himself and his forces well
in hand the whole evening, compelling an accumulative reserve of
control by that nameless inward process of gradually putting all
the emotions away and turning the key upon them, a
process difficult to describe, but wonderfully effective, as all men
who have lived through severe trials of the inner man
(09:10):
well understand. Later it stood him in good stead. But
it was not until half past ten, when they stood
in the hall well, in the glare of friendly lamps,
and still surrounded by comforting human influences, that he had
to make the first call upon this store of collected strength.
For once the door was closed and he saw the deserted,
(09:31):
silent streets stretching away white in the moonlight before them,
it came to him clearly that the real test that
night would be in dealing with two fears instead of one.
He would have to carry his aunt's fear as well
as his own, And as he glanced down at her
sphinklike countenance and realized that it might assume no pleasant
aspect in a rush of real terror, he felt satisfied
(09:53):
with only one thing in the whole adventure, that he
had confidence in his own will and power to stand
against any shock that might be.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Okay. Little recap here got a dude and his aunt
checking out this haunted house that she has the keys to. Yep,
apparently a guy killed a lady.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
There years before, a century ago.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
And it sounds like this Shorthouse guy is handsome and brave. Yes,
and I'm the aunt, you're the aunt. Okay, all right,
here we go. Slowly they walked through the empty streets
of the town. A bright autumn moon silvered the roofs,
casting deep shadows. There was no breath of wind, and
the trees in the formal gardens by the seafront watched
(10:31):
them silently as they passed along. To his aunt's occasional remarks,
Shorthouse made no reply, realizing that she was simply surrounding
herself with the mental buffers, saying ordinary things to prevent
herself thinking of extraordinary things. Few windows showed lights, and
from scarcely a single chimney came smoke or sparks. Shorthouse
had already begun to notice everything, even the smallest details. Presently,
(10:55):
they stopped at the street corner and looked up at
the name on the side of the house full in
the moonlight, and with one accord, but without remark, turned
into the square, and crossed over to the side of
it that lay in the shadow.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
The number of the house is thirteen.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Whispered a voice at aside, and neither of them made
the obvious reference, but passed across the broad sheet of
moonlight and began to march up the pavement in silence.
It was about halfway up the square that Shorthouse felt
an arm slipped quietly but significantly into his own, and
knew then that their adventure had begun in earnest, and
that his companion was already yielding imperceptibly to the influences
(11:33):
against them. She needed support. And a few people are
picturing Josh and I arm in arm, and Josh wearing
a dress. Then you're right on the money.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Like a gray wig with a bun.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yeah, this is Anthony Perkins and mom. A few minutes
later they stopped before a tall, narrow house that rose
before them into the night, ugly in shape and painted
a dingy white. Shutterless windows without blinds stared down upon them,
shining here and there in the moonlight. There were weather
streaks in the wall and cracks in the paint, and
(12:04):
the balcony bulged out from the first floor. A little unnaturally.
But beyond this generally forlorn appearance of an unoccupied house,
there was nothing at first sight to single out this
particular mansion, for the evil character had most certainly acquired.
Taking a look over their shoulders to make sure they
had not been followed, they went boldly up the steps
and stood against the huge black door that fronted them forbiddingly.
(12:26):
But the first wave of nervous snows now upon them,
and Shorthouse fumbled a long time with the key before
he could fit it into the lock at all. For
a moment, if truth were told, they both hoped it
would not open, for they were a prey to various
unpleasant emotions. As they stood there on the threshold of
their ghostly adventure, Shorthouse, shuffling with the key and hampered
by the steady weight on his arm, certainly felt the
(12:49):
solemnity of the moment. It was as if the whole world,
for all experience, seemed at that instant, concentrated in his
own consciousness, were listening to the grating noise of that key.
A stray puff of wind wandering down the empty street
woke a momentary rustling in the trees behind them, but otherwise,
this rattling of the key was the only sound audible,
(13:10):
And at last it turned in the lock, and the
heavy door swung open and revealed a yawning gulf of
darkness beyond.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
With a last glance at the moonlit square, they passed
quickly in, and the door slam behind them with a
roar that echoed prodigiously through empty halls and passages. But
instantly with the echoes, another sound made itself heard, and
Aunt Julia leaned suddenly, so heavily upon him that he
had to take a step backwards to save himself from falling.
(13:41):
A man had coughed close beside them, so close that
it seemed they must have been actually by his side
in the darkness. With the possibility of practical jokes in
his mind, Shorthouse at once swung his heavy stick in
the direction of the sound, but it meant nothing more
than solid air. He heard his aunt give a little
gas beside him. There's someone here, she whispered. I heard
(14:03):
him be quiet, he said sternly.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
It was nothing but the noise of the front door.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Oh get a light quick, she added, as her nephew,
fumbling with a box of matches, opened it. Upside down
and let them fall with a rattle, on to the
stone floor. The sound, however, was not repeated, and there
was no evidence of retreating footsteps. In another minute they
had a candle burning, using an empty end of a
cigar case as a holder, And when the first flare
(14:29):
had died down, he held the impromptu lamp aloft and
surveyed the scene. And it was dreary enough in all conscience,
For there is nothing more desolate in all the abodes
of men than an unfurnished house, dimly lit, silent and forsaken,
and yet tenanted by rumor with the memories of evil
and violent histories. They were standing in a wide hallway.
(14:52):
On their left was the open door of a spacious
dining room, and in front of the hall ran ever
narrowing into a long, dark passage that led apparently to
the top of the kitchen stairs. The broad, uncarpeted staircase
rose in a suite before them, everywhere draped in shadows,
except for a single spot about half way up, where
the moonlight came in through the window and fell in
(15:14):
a bright patch on the boards. This shaft of light
shed a faint radiance above and below it, lending to
the objects within its reach, a misty outline that was
infinitely more suggestive and ghostly than complete darkness. Filtered moonlight
always seems to paint faces on the surrounding gloom, and
his short house peered up into the well of darkness
and thought of the countless empty rooms and passages in
(15:37):
the upper part of the house. He caught himself longing
again for the safety of the moonlit square or the cozy,
bright drawing room they had left an hour before. Then,
realizing that these thoughts were dangerous, he thrust them away
again and summoned all his energy for concentration on the
present aunt Julia.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
He said aloud severely, we must now go through the
house from top to bottom to make a thorough search.
The echoes of his voice died away slowly all over
the building, and in the intense silence that followed, he
turned to look at her in the candlelight. He saw
that her face was already ghastly pale. But she dropped
his arm for a moment and said, in a whisper,
stepping close in front of him.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
I agree. We must be sure there's no one hiding.
That's the first thing.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
She spoke with evident effort, and he looked at her
with admiration. You feel quite sure of yourself. It's not
too late, I think so, she whispered, her eyes shifting
nervously towards shadows behind.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Quite sure. Only one thing, What's that? You must never
leave me alone for an instant.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
As long as you understand that any sound or appearance
that must be investigated at once, for to hesitate means
to admit fear. That is fatal. Agreed, she said, a
little shakily. After a moment's hesitation, I'll try arm in
arm shorthouse, holding the dripping candle and the stick, while
his aunt carried the cloak over her shoulders. Figures of
(17:03):
utter comedy to all but themselves. They began a systematic search, stealthily,
walking on tiptoe and shading the candle lest it should
betray their presence. Through the shutterless windows. They went first
into the big dining room. There was not a stick
of furniture to be seen. Bare walls, ugly mantlepieces, and
empty grates stared at them. Everything they felt resented their intrusion,
(17:28):
watching them as it were, with veiled eyes. Whispers followed
them shadows flitted noiselessly to the right and left. Something
seemed ever at their back, watching, waiting an opportunity to
do them injury. There was the inevitable sense that operations
which went on when the room was empty had been
temporarily suspended till they were well out of way again.
(17:50):
The whole dark interior of the old building seemed to
become a malignant presence that rose up, warning them to
desist and mind their own business. Every moment the strains
on the nerves increased.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
So you hear, what's going on now? I mean, like,
they're in this house, yeah, empty, it's dark, and yet
they both have this impression that they are not alone,
that this house is watching them and resents their intrusion.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah, and the ant is clearly a burden.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Yeah, but she's like, you know, really trying to hang
in there.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Let's give her credit.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Out of the gloomy dining room, they passed through large
folding doors into a sort of library or smoking room,
wrapped equally in silence, darkness, and dust, And from this
they regained the hall near the top of the back stairs.
Here a pitch black tunnel opened before them into the
lower regions and it must be confessed. They hesitated, but
(18:50):
only for a minute. With the worst of the night
still to come, it was essential to turn from nothing.
Aunt Julius stumbled at the top of the dark descent,
ill lit by the flickering candle, and even Shorthouse felt
at least half the decision. Go out of his legs.
Come on, he said, peremptorily, and his voice ran on
and lost itself in the dark empty spaces below. I'm coming,
(19:12):
she faltered, catching his arm with unnecessary violence. They went
a little unsteadily down the stone steps, a cold, damp
air meeting them in the face, close and malodorous. The
kitchen into which the stairs led along a narrow passage,
was large, with the lofty ceiling. Several doors opened out
of it, some into cupboards with empty jars still standing
(19:35):
on the shelves, and others into horrible, little, ghostly back offices,
each colder and less inviting than the last. Black beetles
scurried over the floor, and once, when they knocked against
the deal table standing in the corner, something about the
size of a cat jumped down with a rush and fled,
scampering across the stone floor into the darkness everywhere. There
(19:56):
was a sense of recent occupation, an impression of sadness
and glued. Leaving the main kitchen, they went toward the scullery.
The door was standing ajar, and as they pushed it
open to its full extent, Aunt Juliet uttered a piercing scream,
which she instantly tried to stifle by placing her hand
over her mouth. For a second. Shorthouse stood stock still,
(20:16):
catching his breath. He felt as if his spine had
suddenly become hollow, and someone had filled it with particles
of ice. Facing them directly in their way, between the
doorposts stood the figure of a woman. She had disheveled
hair and wildly staring eyes, and her face was terrified
and white as death. She stood there motionless for the
(20:37):
space of a single second. Then the candle flickered and
she was gone, gone utterly, and the door framed nothing
but empty darkness.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Only the beastly jumping candlelight.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
He said quickly, in a voice that sounded like someone else's.
It was only half under control.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Come on, Aunt, there's nothing there. He dragged her forward,
with a clattering of feet and a great appearance of boldness.
They went on but over his body the skin mood
as if crawling ants covered it, and he knew by
the weight on his arm that he was supplying the
force of locomotion. For two, the scullery was cold, bare
and empty, more like a large prison cell than anything else.
(21:16):
They went round it, tried the door into the yard
and the windows, but found them all fastened securely. His
aunt moved beside him like a person in a dream.
Her eyes were tightly shut, and she seemed merely to
follow the pressure of his arm. Her courage filled him
with amazement. At the same time, she noticed that a
certain odd change had come over her face, a change
which somehow evaded his powers of analysis. There's nothing here, Auntie,
(21:40):
he replied aloud. Quickly, Let's go upstairs and see the
rest of the house. Then we'll choose a room to
wait up in. She followed him obediently, keeping close to
his side, and they locked the kitchen door behind them.
It was a relief to get up again, and the
hall there was more light than before, for the moon
had traveled a little further down the stairs. Cautiously, they
began to go up into the dark vault of the
(22:01):
upper house. The boards creaking under their weight. On the
first floor, they found the large double drawing rooms, a
search of which revealed nothing. Here also was no sign
of furniture or recent occupancy, nothing but dust and neglect
and shadows. They opened the big folding doors between front
and back drawing rooms, and then came out again to
the landing and went upstairs. They had not gone up
(22:23):
more than a dozen steps when they both simultaneously stopped
to listen, looking into each other's eyes with a new apprehension.
Across the flickering candleplane from the room they had left
hardly ten seconds before, came the sound of doors quietly closing.
It was beyond all question. They heard the booming noise
that accompanies the shutting of heavy doors, followed by the
(22:46):
sharp catching of the latch. We must go back and see,
said Shorthouse briefly, in a low tone, and turning to
go downstairs again. Somehow she managed to drag after him,
her feet catching in her dress, her face livid.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
When they entered the front drawing room, it was plain
that the folding doors had been closed half a minute before.
Without hesitation, short House opened them. He almost expected to
see someone facing him in the back room, but only
darkness and cold air met him. They went through both rooms,
finding nothing unusual. They tried in every way to make
the doors close of themselves, but there was not wind
(23:23):
enough even to set the candle flame flickering. The doors
would not move without strong pressure. All was silent as
the grave. Undeniably, the rooms were utterly empty, and the
house utterly still its beginning, whispered a voice at his elbow,
which he hardly recognized as his aunts. He nodded acquiescence,
(23:44):
taking out his watch to note the time. It was
fifteen minutes before midnight. He made the entry of exactly
what had occurred in his note book, setting the candle
in its case upon the floor. In order to do so,
it took a moment or two to balance it safely
against the wall. Aunt Julia always declared that at this
moment she was not actually watching him, but had turned
(24:05):
her head toward the inner room, where she fancied she
had heard something moving. But at any rate, both positively
agreed that there came a sound of rushing feet, heavy
and very swift, and the next instant the candle was out.
But to Shorthouse himself had come more than this and
he had always thanked his fortunate stars that it came
to him alone, and not to his aunt too. For
(24:28):
as he rose from the stooping position of balancing the candle,
and before it was actually extinguished, a face thrust itself forward,
so close to his own that he could almost have
touched it with his lips. It was a face working
with passion, a man's face, dark with thick features and angry,
savage eyes. It belonged to a common man, and it
was evil in its ordinary normal expression, no doubt. But
(24:50):
as he saw it alive with intense, aggressive emotion, it
was malignant in a terrible human countenance. There was no
movement of the air, nothing but the sound of rushing
feet stocking their muffled feet, the apparition of the face,
and the almost simultaneous extinguishing of the candle.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
All right, so the s is hitting the fan. The
poopoo was hitting the fan at this point.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Yeah, he could have kissed this ghost.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, and they've seen what possibly as a stable man,
an angry man, and maybe even the woman he murdered.
And there's cats. It's always scary.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
You hope it's a cat. It was something the size
of a cat.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Yet they're still in here. Here we go. In spite
of himself, Shorthouse uttered a little cry, nearly losing his balance,
as his aunt clung to him with her whole weight.
In one moment of real, uncontrollable terror. She made no sound,
but simply seized him bodily. Fortunately, however, she had seen nothing,
but had only heard the rushing feet for her control
(25:53):
returned almost at once, and he was able to disentangle
himself and strike a match. The shadows ran away on
all sides before the glare, and his aunt stooped down
and groped for the cigar case with a precious candle.
Then they discovered that the candle had not been blown
out at all. It had been crushed out. The wick
was pressed down into the wax, which was flattened, as
(26:15):
if by some smooth, heavy instrument. How his companion so
quickly overcame her terror, Shorthouse never properly understood, but his
admiration for her self control increased tenfold, and at that
same time served to feed his own dying flame, for
which he was undeniably grateful. Equally inexplicable to him was
the evidence of physical force they had just witnessed. He
(26:37):
at once suppressed the memories of stories he had heard
of physical mediums in their dangerous phenomena. For if these
were true, and either his aunt or himself was unwittingly
a physical medium, it meant that they were simply aiding
to focus the forces of a haunted house already charged
to the brim. It was like walking with unprotected lamps
among uncovered stores of gunpowder. So, with his little reflection
(27:00):
as possible, he simply ReLit the candle and went up
to the next floor. The arm in his trembled, it
is true, and his own tread was often uncertain. But
they went on with thoroughness, and after a search revealing nothing,
they climbed the last flight of stairs to the top floor.
Of all. Here they found a perfect nest of small
(27:20):
servants rooms with broken pieces of furniture, dirty cane bottom chairs,
chest of drawers, cracked mirrors, and decrepit bedsteads. The room
had low sloping ceilings already hung here and there with cobwebs,
small windows, and badly plastered walls. A depressing and dismal
region which they were glad to leave behind. Man, are
(27:46):
they gonna make it out?
Speaker 3 (27:48):
I don't know, Chuck, all right, let's find out. It
was on the stroke of midnight when they entered a
small room on the third floor, close to the top
of the stairs, and arranged to make themselves comfortable for
the remainder of their adventures. It was absolutely bare, and
was said to be the room then used as a
clothes closet into which the infuriated groom had chased his
(28:08):
victim and finally caught her outside Across the narrow landing
began the stairs leading up to the floor above and
the servants quarters where they had just searched. In spite
of the chilliness of the night. There was something in
the air of this room that cried out for an
open window. But there was more than this. Shorthouse could
only describe it by saying that he felt less master
(28:29):
of himself here than in any other part of the house.
There was something that acted directly on his nerves, tiring
the resolution, enfeebling the will. He was conscious of this
result before he had been in the room five minutes,
and it was just in the short time that they
stayed there that he suffered the wholesale depletion of his
vital forces, which was for himself the chief horror of
(28:52):
the whole experience. They put the candle on the floor
of the cupboard, leaving the door a few inches ajar,
so that there was no glare to confuse the eyes,
and no shadow to shift about on walls and ceiling.
Then they spread the cloak on the floor and sat
down to wait with their backs against the wall. Shorthouse
was within two feet of the door on to the landing.
(29:14):
His position commanded a good view of the main staircase
leading down into the darkness, and also of the beginning
of the servants stairs going to the floor above. The
heavy stick lay beside him within easy reach. The moon
was now high above the house. Through the open window,
they could see the comforting stars, like friendly eyes watching
in the sky. One by one, the clocks of the
(29:34):
town struck midnight, and when the sounds died away, the
deep silence of a windless night fell again over everything.
Only the boom of the sea, far away and lugubrious,
filled the air with hollow murmurs, lugubrious near big trouble,
undeclarated in Saint Deletrious.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Inside the house, the silence became awful, awful, he thought,
because any minute now it might be broken by sounds
of portending terror. The strain of waiting told more and
more severely on the nerves. They talked in whispers when
they talked at all, For their voices aloud sounded queer
and unnatural. A chilliness, not altogether due to the night
(30:16):
air invaded the room and made them cold. The influences
against them, whatever these might be, were slowly robbing them
of self confidence and the power of decisive action. Their
forces were on the wane, and the possibility of real
fear took on a new and terrible meaning. He began
to tremble for the elderly woman by his side, whose
pluck could hardly save her. Beyond a certain extent. He
(30:39):
heard the blood singing in his veins. It sometimes seemed
so loud that he fancied it prevented his hearing properly
certain other sounds that were beginning very faintly to make
themselves audible in the depths of the house. Every time
he fastened his attention on the sounds, they instantly ceased.
They certainly came no nearer. Yet he could not rid
himself of the idea that movement was going on somewhere
(31:01):
in the lower regions of the house. The drawing room floor,
where the doors had been so strangely closed, seemed too near.
The sounds were further off than that. He thought of
the great kitchen with the scurrying black beetles, and of
the dismal little scullery, But somehow or other it did
not seem to come from there either. Surely they were
(31:22):
not outside the house. Then suddenly the truth flashed into
his mind, and for the space of a minute he
felt as if his blood had stopped flowing and turned
to ice. The sounds were not downstairs at all. They
were upstairs, upstairs, somewhere among those horrid, gloomy little servants
rooms with their bits of broken furniture, low ceilings and
(31:44):
cramped windows, upstairs where the victim had first been disturbed
and stalked her to death. And the moment he discovered
where the sounds were, he began to hear them more clearly.
It was the sound of feet moving stealthily along the
passage over head, in and out among the rooms and
pasted the furniture.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
He turned quickly to steal a glance at the motionless
figure seated beside him to note whether she had shared
his discovery. The faint candlelight coming through the crack in
the cupboard door, through her strongly marked face into a
vivid relief against the white of the wall. But it
was something else that made him catch his breath and
stare again. An extraordinary something had come into her face
(32:25):
and seemed to spread over her features like a mask.
It smoothed out the deep lines and drew the skin
everywhere a little tighter, so that the wrinkles disappeared. It
brought into the face, with the sole exception of the
old eyes, an appearance of youth and almost of childhood.
He stared in speechless amazement, amazement that was dangerously near
(32:45):
to horror. It was his aunt's face, indeed, but it
was her face of forty years ago, the vacant, innocent
face of a girl. He had heard stories of that
strange effect of terror, which could wipe a human countenance
clean of other emotions, obliterating all previous expressions, but he
had never realized that it could be literally true, or
could mean anything so simply horrible as what he now saw.
(33:08):
For the dreadful signature of overmastering fear was written plainly
in that utter vacancy of the girlish face beside him,
And when feeling his intense gaze, she turned to look
at him. He instinctively closed his eyes tightly to shut
out the sight. Yet when he turned a minute later,
his feelings well in hand, he saw, to his intense
relief another expression. His aunt was smiling, and though the
(33:31):
face was deathly white, the awful veil had lifted and
the normal look was returning.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Anything wrong was all he could think of to say
at the moment, and the answer was eloquent, coming from
such an old woman.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
I feel cold and a little frightened.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
She whispered. He offered to close the window, but she
seized hold of him and begged him not to leave
her side, even for an instant. It's upstairs, I know,
she whispered, with an odd half laugh.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
But I can't possibly go up.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
But short, how else thought otherwise, Knowing that in action
lay their best hope of self control, he took the
brandy flask and poured out a glass of neat spirit,
stiff enough to help anybody over anything. It's a good move.
She swallowed it with a little shiver. His only idea
now was to get out of the house before her
collapse became inevitable. But this could not safely be done
(34:21):
by turning tail and running from the enemy, an action
was no longer possible. Every minute he was growing less
master of himself, and desperate. Aggressive measures were imperative without
further delay. Moreover, the action must be taken towards the enemy,
not away from it. The climax, if necessary and unavoidable,
(34:41):
would have to be faced boldly. He could do it now,
but in ten minutes he might not have the force
left to act for himself, much less for both. Upstairs,
the sounds were meanwhile becoming louder and closer, accompanied by
the occasional creaking of the boards. Someone was moving stille
healthily about, stumbling now and then awkwardly against the furniture,
(35:04):
Waiting a few moments to allow the tremendous dose of
spirits to produce its effect, and knowing this would last
but a short time under the circumstances, Shorthouse then quietly
got on his feet, saying in a determined voice, Now,
Aunt Julia, we'll go upstairs and find out what all
this noise is about. You must come too. It's what
(35:25):
we agreed. See he's gotten a little whiskey in his belly.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Yeah, he's a little drunk, and he's like.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Get your butt up here, right, You drug me into.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
This, yeah, Brandy says the day again, He picked up
his stick and went to the cupboard for the candle.
A limp form rose shakily beside him, breathing hard, and
he heard a voice say, very faintly something about being
ready to come. The woman's courage amazed him. It was
so much greater than his own. And as they advanced,
(35:58):
holding aloft the dripping candle, some subtle force exhaled from
this trembling, white faced old woman at his side. That
was the true source of his inspiration. It held something
really great that shamed him and gave him the support
without which he would have proved far less. Equal to
the occasion, they crossed the dark landing, avoiding with their
eyes the deep black space over the banisters. Then they
(36:21):
began to mount the narrow staircase to meet the sounds,
which minute by minute grew louder and nearer. About halfway
up the stairs, Aunt Julius stumbled, and Shorthouse turned to
catch her by the arm, and just at that moment
there came a terrific crash in the servant's corridor overhead.
It was instantly followed by a shrill, agonized scream that
was a cry of terror and a cry for help
(36:43):
melted into one. Before they could move aside or go
down a single step, someone came rushing along the passage overhead,
blundering horribly, racing madly at full speed, three steps at
a time down the very staircase where they stood. The
steps were light and uncertain, but behind them sounded the
heavier tread of another person, and the staircase seemed to shake.
(37:05):
Shorthouse and his companion just had time to flatten themselves
against the wall when the jumble of flying steps was
upon them, and two persons with the slightest possible interval
between them, dashed past at full speed. It was a
perfect whirlwind of sound, breaking in upon the midnight silence
of the empty building. The two runners, pursuer and pursued,
had passed clean through them where they stood, and already
(37:27):
worth a thud. The boards below had received the first one,
then the other. Yet they had seen absolutely nothing, not
a hand or an arm, or a face, or even
a shred of flying clothing. Then came a second's pause,
then the first one, the lighter of the two, obviously
the pursued one, ran with uncertain footsteps into the little
room which Shorthouse and his aunt had just left, the
(37:50):
heavier one following There was a sound of scuffly gasping
and smothered screaming, and then out on the landing came
the step of a single person treading.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
A dead silence followed for the space of half a minute,
and then was heard a rushing sound through the air.
It was followed by a dull, crashing thud in the
depths of the house below. On the stone floor of
the hall, utter silence reigned. After nothing moved. The flame
of the candle was steady, it had been steady the
whole time, and the air had been undisturbed by any
(38:22):
movement whatsoever. Palsied with terror, Aunt Julia, without waiting for
her companion, began fumbling her way downstairs. She was crying
gently to herself, and when Shorthouse put his arm round
her and half carried her, he felt that she was
trembling like a leaf. He went into the little room
and picked up the cloak from the floor and arm
(38:43):
in arm, walking very slowly, without speaking a word or
looking once behind them, they marched down the three flights
into the hall. In the hall, they saw nothing but
the whole way down the stairs, they were conscious that
someone followed them step by step. When they went back,
it was left behind, and when they went more slowly,
it caught them up. But never once did they look
(39:06):
behind to see. And at each turning of the staircase
they lowered their eyes for fear of the following horror
they might see upon the stairs above. With trembling hands,
Shorthouse opened the front door, and they walked out into
the moonlight and drew a deep breath of the cool
night air blowing in from the sea.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
Wow. They made it out.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Yeah, and sounds like the stable man threw the girl
over the banister once again.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
I have a feeling he does that every night, you
think so, or at the very least on the anniversary
of the night of the murder.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
And the how ghosts work?
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Yeah, creepy stuff, good stuff, good one.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
Congratulations, Congratulations to you too, sir, Jerry.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Fine Shorthouse, Jerry can't wait too. And you're a fine
aunt leaf shaky lady. Yeah, sure, Jerry can't wait to
hear the sound design always a treat for us.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Yeah, and everyone out there. If you like this, Algernon
Blackwood has a lot of other good stuff. Yeah, check
it out and have a really happy Halloween.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah, be safe out there.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com. Brought to you by the all new
twenty fourteen Toyota Corolla
Brought to you by the all new twenty fourteen Toyota Corolla.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles w Chuck Bryan. It's very spooky, It's Halloween, it's.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
This is the holiday episode, Christmas Holiday episode or my
favorite two of the year.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Yes, oh yeah, it's a tradition. Now I love tradition. Yeah, custom, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
You want to explain what we do each Halloween in
case people aren't in the know.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
We like to read a scary story for Halloween. The
first few years we read public domain scary stories HP Lovecraft,
Edgrell and Poe.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yeah so Chuck.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
If you remember last year we held a horror fiction contest.
Yeah yeah, and we came up with the winner. There
was a sweet sixteen you can actually go read them
on stuff youshould Know dot com. All sixteen of them
are awesome. And then we had like a leg wrestling
competition and the guy who came out on top was
Brett s Arnold with his really awesome story signed forever
(01:06):
and Ever.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah, thank you, strong Leg. Josh.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
I didn't like wrestle I just watched Oh that was
me and Tracy. Yeah you don't remember. This is awkward,
it's crazy, like Tracy was really fast. Yeah, and she
was strangely agitated too, like she really had something against you. Anyway,
Brette s Arnold one signed Forever and Ever. If you
haven't heard that, go back and listen to. It's very creepy.
Jerry did some excellent sound design. And then but this
(01:31):
year we are not holding another contest that way.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
No, No, even though it was great, that was a
lot of reading.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
That's right. And then this year we're back at it
reading a very scary short story from the early twentieth
century written by a writer named Algernon Blackwood who was fantastic.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah. You get a name like Algernon Blackwood and you
were born to write short story horror.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Exactly, or you're gonna found some like a church of
Satan or something like that.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, he probably tried both. He's a good writer, yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
More positive than you'd think.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, and this is a good one. Just to set
it up, it's about a haunted house and a couple
of people venturing through this haunted house. Yeah, and it's
creepy as age.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
It is so we're gonna get to it. Jerry's gonna
lay down the sound design and we're going to scare
the socks off of you. Happy Halloween to you guys.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Turn the lights down, and here we go with the
Empty House by Algernon Blackwood.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at
once their character for evil. In the case of the latter,
no particular feature need betray them. They may boast an
open countenance and an ingenuous smile, and yet a little
of their company leaves the unalterable conviction that there is
something radically amiss with their being, that they are evil
(02:59):
Willie Nil. They seem to communicate an atmosphere of secret
and wicked thoughts, which makes those in their immediate neighborhood
shrink from them, as from a thing diseased. And perhaps
with houses, the same principle as operative. And it is
the aroma of evil deeds committed under a particular roof,
long after the evil doers have passed away, that makes
(03:19):
the goose flesh come and the hair rise. Something of
the original passion of the evil doer, and of the
horror felt by his victim enters the heart of the
innocent watcher, and he becomes suddenly conscious of tingling nerves,
creeping skin, and a chilling of the blood. He is
terror stricken without apparent cause.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
There was manifestly nothing in the external appearance of this
particular house to bear out the tales of the horror
that was said to reign within. It was neither lonely
nor enkempt. It stood crowded into a corner of the
square and looked exactly like the houses on either side
of it. The same number of windows as its neighbors,
the same balcony overlooking the gardens, the same white steps
(04:05):
leading up to the heavy black front door, and in
the rear there was the same narrow strip of green
with neat box borders running up to the wall that
divided it from the backs of the adjoining houses. Apparently too,
the number of the chimney pots on the roof was
the same, the breadth and angle of the eaves, and
even the height of the dirty area railings. And yet
this house in the square that seemed precisely similar to
(04:27):
its fifty ugly neighbors, was a matter of fact, entirely different,
horribly different. Wherein lay this marked invisible difference is impossible
to say. It cannot be ascribed wholly to the imagination,
because persons who had spent some time in the house,
knowing nothing of the facts, had declared positively that certain
rooms were so disagreeable they would rather die than enter
(04:50):
them again, and that the atmosphere of the whole house
produced in them symptoms of a genuine terror. While the
series of innocent tenants who had tried to live in
it had been forced to DeCamp at the shortest possible notice,
was indeed little less than a scandal of the town.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
When Shorthouse arrived to pay a week end visit to
his aunt Julia and her house on the seafront at
the other end of the town, he found her charged
to the brim with mystery and excitement. He had only
received her telegram that morning, and he had come anticipating boredom.
But the moment he touched her hand and kissed her
apple skin wrinkled cheek, he caught the first wave of
(05:29):
her electrical condition. The impression deepened when he learned that
there were to be no other visitors, and that he
had been telegraphed for with a very special object. Something
was in the wind, and the something would doubtless bear fruit.
For this elderly spinster, Aunt with a mania for psychical research,
had brains as well as willpower, and by hook er
(05:50):
by crook she usually managed to accomplish her ends. The
revelation was made soon after tea, when she sidled close
up to him as they paced slowly along the sea
front in the dusk. I've got the keys, she announced,
in a delighted yet half awesome voice, got them till Monday.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
The keys of the bathing machine, or.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
He asked, innocently, looking from the sea to the town.
Nothing brought her so quickly to the point as feigning
stupidity Neither. She whispered, I've got the keys of the
haunted house in the square, and I'm going there to night.
Shorthouse was conscious of the slightest possible tremor down his back.
He dropped his teasing tone. Something in her voice and
(06:30):
manner thrilled him. She was in earnest.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
But you can't go alone.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
He began, That's why I wired for you, she said,
with decision.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
He turned to look at her. The ugly line enigmatical
face was alive with excitement. There was the glow of
genuine enthusiasm round it like a halo. The eye shone.
He caught another wave of her excitement, and a second trimmer,
more marked than the first, accompanied it. Thanks Aunt, Julia,
he said politely.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Thanks awfully, I should not dare to go quite alone.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
She went on, raising her voice.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
But with you, I should enjoy it immensely. You're afraid
of nothing, I know.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Thanks so much, he said again. Here is anything likely
to happen.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
A great deal has happened, she whispered, though it's been
most cleverly hushed up. Three tenants have come and gone
in the last few months, and the house is said
to be empty for good now.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
In spite of himself, Shorthouse became interested. His aunt was
so very much in earnest.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
The house is very old, indeed, she went on. And
the story, an unpleasant one, dates a long way back.
It has to do with a murder committed by a
jealous stableman who had some affair with the servant in
the house. One night, he managed to secrete himself in
the cellar, and when everyone was asleep, he crept upstairs
to the servants quarters, chased the girl down to the
(07:48):
next landing, and before anyone could come to the rescue.
Threw her bodily over the banisters into.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
The hall below, and the stableman was.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Caught, I believe, and hanged for murder. But it all
happened this century ago, and I've not been able to
get more details of this story. Shorthouse now felt his
interest thoroughly aroused, but though he was not particularly nervous
for himself, he hesitated a little on his aunt's account.
On one condition, he said, at length, nothing will prevent
my going. She said firmly, But I may as well
(08:19):
hear your condition.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
That you guarantee your power of self control if anything
really horrible happens. I mean that you are sure you
won't get too.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Frightened, Jim, she said scornfully. I'm not young, I know,
nor are my nerves. But with you I should be
afraid of nothing in the world. This, of course settled it.
For Shorthouse had no pretensions to being other than a
very ordinary young man, and an appeal to his vanity
was irresistible. He agreed to go instinctively. By a sort
(08:50):
of subconscious preparation. He kept himself and his forces well
in hand the whole evening, compelling an accumulative reserve of
control by that nameless inward process of gradually putting all
the emotions away and turning the key upon them, a
process difficult to describe, but wonderfully effective, as all men
who have lived through severe trials of the inner man
(09:10):
well understand. Later it stood him in good stead. But
it was not until half past ten, when they stood
in the hall well, in the glare of friendly lamps,
and still surrounded by comforting human influences, that he had
to make the first call upon this store of collected strength.
For once the door was closed and he saw the deserted,
(09:31):
silent streets stretching away white in the moonlight before them,
it came to him clearly that the real test that
night would be in dealing with two fears instead of one.
He would have to carry his aunt's fear as well
as his own, And as he glanced down at her
sphinklike countenance and realized that it might assume no pleasant
aspect in a rush of real terror, he felt satisfied
(09:53):
with only one thing in the whole adventure, that he
had confidence in his own will and power to stand
against any shock that might be.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Okay. Little recap here got a dude and his aunt
checking out this haunted house that she has the keys to. Yep,
apparently a guy killed a lady.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
There years before, a century ago.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
And it sounds like this Shorthouse guy is handsome and brave. Yes,
and I'm the aunt, you're the aunt. Okay, all right,
here we go. Slowly they walked through the empty streets
of the town. A bright autumn moon silvered the roofs,
casting deep shadows. There was no breath of wind, and
the trees in the formal gardens by the seafront watched
(10:31):
them silently as they passed along. To his aunt's occasional remarks,
Shorthouse made no reply, realizing that she was simply surrounding
herself with the mental buffers, saying ordinary things to prevent
herself thinking of extraordinary things. Few windows showed lights, and
from scarcely a single chimney came smoke or sparks. Shorthouse
had already begun to notice everything, even the smallest details. Presently,
(10:55):
they stopped at the street corner and looked up at
the name on the side of the house full in
the moonlight, and with one accord, but without remark, turned
into the square, and crossed over to the side of
it that lay in the shadow.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
The number of the house is thirteen.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Whispered a voice at aside, and neither of them made
the obvious reference, but passed across the broad sheet of
moonlight and began to march up the pavement in silence.
It was about halfway up the square that Shorthouse felt
an arm slipped quietly but significantly into his own, and
knew then that their adventure had begun in earnest, and
that his companion was already yielding imperceptibly to the influences
(11:33):
against them. She needed support. And a few people are
picturing Josh and I arm in arm, and Josh wearing
a dress. Then you're right on the money.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Like a gray wig with a bun.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yeah, this is Anthony Perkins and mom. A few minutes
later they stopped before a tall, narrow house that rose
before them into the night, ugly in shape and painted
a dingy white. Shutterless windows without blinds stared down upon them,
shining here and there in the moonlight. There were weather
streaks in the wall and cracks in the paint, and
(12:04):
the balcony bulged out from the first floor. A little unnaturally.
But beyond this generally forlorn appearance of an unoccupied house,
there was nothing at first sight to single out this
particular mansion, for the evil character had most certainly acquired.
Taking a look over their shoulders to make sure they
had not been followed, they went boldly up the steps
and stood against the huge black door that fronted them forbiddingly.
(12:26):
But the first wave of nervous snows now upon them,
and Shorthouse fumbled a long time with the key before
he could fit it into the lock at all. For
a moment, if truth were told, they both hoped it
would not open, for they were a prey to various
unpleasant emotions. As they stood there on the threshold of
their ghostly adventure, Shorthouse, shuffling with the key and hampered
by the steady weight on his arm, certainly felt the
(12:49):
solemnity of the moment. It was as if the whole world,
for all experience, seemed at that instant, concentrated in his
own consciousness, were listening to the grating noise of that key.
A stray puff of wind wandering down the empty street
woke a momentary rustling in the trees behind them, but otherwise,
this rattling of the key was the only sound audible,
(13:10):
And at last it turned in the lock, and the
heavy door swung open and revealed a yawning gulf of
darkness beyond.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
With a last glance at the moonlit square, they passed
quickly in, and the door slam behind them with a
roar that echoed prodigiously through empty halls and passages. But
instantly with the echoes, another sound made itself heard, and
Aunt Julia leaned suddenly, so heavily upon him that he
had to take a step backwards to save himself from falling.
(13:41):
A man had coughed close beside them, so close that
it seemed they must have been actually by his side
in the darkness. With the possibility of practical jokes in
his mind, Shorthouse at once swung his heavy stick in
the direction of the sound, but it meant nothing more
than solid air. He heard his aunt give a little
gas beside him. There's someone here, she whispered. I heard
(14:03):
him be quiet, he said sternly.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
It was nothing but the noise of the front door.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Oh get a light quick, she added, as her nephew,
fumbling with a box of matches, opened it. Upside down
and let them fall with a rattle, on to the
stone floor. The sound, however, was not repeated, and there
was no evidence of retreating footsteps. In another minute they
had a candle burning, using an empty end of a
cigar case as a holder, And when the first flare
(14:29):
had died down, he held the impromptu lamp aloft and
surveyed the scene. And it was dreary enough in all conscience,
For there is nothing more desolate in all the abodes
of men than an unfurnished house, dimly lit, silent and forsaken,
and yet tenanted by rumor with the memories of evil
and violent histories. They were standing in a wide hallway.
(14:52):
On their left was the open door of a spacious
dining room, and in front of the hall ran ever
narrowing into a long, dark passage that led apparently to
the top of the kitchen stairs. The broad, uncarpeted staircase
rose in a suite before them, everywhere draped in shadows,
except for a single spot about half way up, where
the moonlight came in through the window and fell in
(15:14):
a bright patch on the boards. This shaft of light
shed a faint radiance above and below it, lending to
the objects within its reach, a misty outline that was
infinitely more suggestive and ghostly than complete darkness. Filtered moonlight
always seems to paint faces on the surrounding gloom, and
his short house peered up into the well of darkness
and thought of the countless empty rooms and passages in
(15:37):
the upper part of the house. He caught himself longing
again for the safety of the moonlit square or the cozy,
bright drawing room they had left an hour before. Then,
realizing that these thoughts were dangerous, he thrust them away
again and summoned all his energy for concentration on the
present aunt Julia.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
He said aloud severely, we must now go through the
house from top to bottom to make a thorough search.
The echoes of his voice died away slowly all over
the building, and in the intense silence that followed, he
turned to look at her in the candlelight. He saw
that her face was already ghastly pale. But she dropped
his arm for a moment and said, in a whisper,
stepping close in front of him.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
I agree. We must be sure there's no one hiding.
That's the first thing.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
She spoke with evident effort, and he looked at her
with admiration. You feel quite sure of yourself. It's not
too late, I think so, she whispered, her eyes shifting
nervously towards shadows behind.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Quite sure. Only one thing, What's that? You must never
leave me alone for an instant.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
As long as you understand that any sound or appearance
that must be investigated at once, for to hesitate means
to admit fear. That is fatal. Agreed, she said, a
little shakily. After a moment's hesitation, I'll try arm in
arm shorthouse, holding the dripping candle and the stick, while
his aunt carried the cloak over her shoulders. Figures of
(17:03):
utter comedy to all but themselves. They began a systematic search, stealthily,
walking on tiptoe and shading the candle lest it should
betray their presence. Through the shutterless windows. They went first
into the big dining room. There was not a stick
of furniture to be seen. Bare walls, ugly mantlepieces, and
empty grates stared at them. Everything they felt resented their intrusion,
(17:28):
watching them as it were, with veiled eyes. Whispers followed
them shadows flitted noiselessly to the right and left. Something
seemed ever at their back, watching, waiting an opportunity to
do them injury. There was the inevitable sense that operations
which went on when the room was empty had been
temporarily suspended till they were well out of way again.
(17:50):
The whole dark interior of the old building seemed to
become a malignant presence that rose up, warning them to
desist and mind their own business. Every moment the strains
on the nerves increased.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
So you hear, what's going on now? I mean, like,
they're in this house, yeah, empty, it's dark, and yet
they both have this impression that they are not alone,
that this house is watching them and resents their intrusion.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah, and the ant is clearly a burden.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Yeah, but she's like, you know, really trying to hang
in there.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Let's give her credit.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Out of the gloomy dining room, they passed through large
folding doors into a sort of library or smoking room,
wrapped equally in silence, darkness, and dust, And from this
they regained the hall near the top of the back stairs.
Here a pitch black tunnel opened before them into the
lower regions and it must be confessed. They hesitated, but
(18:50):
only for a minute. With the worst of the night
still to come, it was essential to turn from nothing.
Aunt Julius stumbled at the top of the dark descent,
ill lit by the flickering candle, and even Shorthouse felt
at least half the decision. Go out of his legs.
Come on, he said, peremptorily, and his voice ran on
and lost itself in the dark empty spaces below. I'm coming,
(19:12):
she faltered, catching his arm with unnecessary violence. They went
a little unsteadily down the stone steps, a cold, damp
air meeting them in the face, close and malodorous. The
kitchen into which the stairs led along a narrow passage,
was large, with the lofty ceiling. Several doors opened out
of it, some into cupboards with empty jars still standing
(19:35):
on the shelves, and others into horrible, little, ghostly back offices,
each colder and less inviting than the last. Black beetles
scurried over the floor, and once, when they knocked against
the deal table standing in the corner, something about the
size of a cat jumped down with a rush and fled,
scampering across the stone floor into the darkness everywhere. There
(19:56):
was a sense of recent occupation, an impression of sadness
and glued. Leaving the main kitchen, they went toward the scullery.
The door was standing ajar, and as they pushed it
open to its full extent, Aunt Juliet uttered a piercing scream,
which she instantly tried to stifle by placing her hand
over her mouth. For a second. Shorthouse stood stock still,
(20:16):
catching his breath. He felt as if his spine had
suddenly become hollow, and someone had filled it with particles
of ice. Facing them directly in their way, between the
doorposts stood the figure of a woman. She had disheveled
hair and wildly staring eyes, and her face was terrified
and white as death. She stood there motionless for the
(20:37):
space of a single second. Then the candle flickered and
she was gone, gone utterly, and the door framed nothing
but empty darkness.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Only the beastly jumping candlelight.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
He said quickly, in a voice that sounded like someone else's.
It was only half under control.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Come on, Aunt, there's nothing there. He dragged her forward,
with a clattering of feet and a great appearance of boldness.
They went on but over his body the skin mood
as if crawling ants covered it, and he knew by
the weight on his arm that he was supplying the
force of locomotion. For two, the scullery was cold, bare
and empty, more like a large prison cell than anything else.
(21:16):
They went round it, tried the door into the yard
and the windows, but found them all fastened securely. His
aunt moved beside him like a person in a dream.
Her eyes were tightly shut, and she seemed merely to
follow the pressure of his arm. Her courage filled him
with amazement. At the same time, she noticed that a
certain odd change had come over her face, a change
which somehow evaded his powers of analysis. There's nothing here, Auntie,
(21:40):
he replied aloud. Quickly, Let's go upstairs and see the
rest of the house. Then we'll choose a room to
wait up in. She followed him obediently, keeping close to
his side, and they locked the kitchen door behind them.
It was a relief to get up again, and the
hall there was more light than before, for the moon
had traveled a little further down the stairs. Cautiously, they
began to go up into the dark vault of the
(22:01):
upper house. The boards creaking under their weight. On the
first floor, they found the large double drawing rooms, a
search of which revealed nothing. Here also was no sign
of furniture or recent occupancy, nothing but dust and neglect
and shadows. They opened the big folding doors between front
and back drawing rooms, and then came out again to
the landing and went upstairs. They had not gone up
(22:23):
more than a dozen steps when they both simultaneously stopped
to listen, looking into each other's eyes with a new apprehension.
Across the flickering candleplane from the room they had left
hardly ten seconds before, came the sound of doors quietly closing.
It was beyond all question. They heard the booming noise
that accompanies the shutting of heavy doors, followed by the
(22:46):
sharp catching of the latch. We must go back and see,
said Shorthouse briefly, in a low tone, and turning to
go downstairs again. Somehow she managed to drag after him,
her feet catching in her dress, her face livid.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
When they entered the front drawing room, it was plain
that the folding doors had been closed half a minute before.
Without hesitation, short House opened them. He almost expected to
see someone facing him in the back room, but only
darkness and cold air met him. They went through both rooms,
finding nothing unusual. They tried in every way to make
the doors close of themselves, but there was not wind
(23:23):
enough even to set the candle flame flickering. The doors
would not move without strong pressure. All was silent as
the grave. Undeniably, the rooms were utterly empty, and the
house utterly still its beginning, whispered a voice at his elbow,
which he hardly recognized as his aunts. He nodded acquiescence,
(23:44):
taking out his watch to note the time. It was
fifteen minutes before midnight. He made the entry of exactly
what had occurred in his note book, setting the candle
in its case upon the floor. In order to do so,
it took a moment or two to balance it safely
against the wall. Aunt Julia always declared that at this
moment she was not actually watching him, but had turned
(24:05):
her head toward the inner room, where she fancied she
had heard something moving. But at any rate, both positively
agreed that there came a sound of rushing feet, heavy
and very swift, and the next instant the candle was out.
But to Shorthouse himself had come more than this and
he had always thanked his fortunate stars that it came
to him alone, and not to his aunt too. For
(24:28):
as he rose from the stooping position of balancing the candle,
and before it was actually extinguished, a face thrust itself forward,
so close to his own that he could almost have
touched it with his lips. It was a face working
with passion, a man's face, dark with thick features and angry,
savage eyes. It belonged to a common man, and it
was evil in its ordinary normal expression, no doubt. But
(24:50):
as he saw it alive with intense, aggressive emotion, it
was malignant in a terrible human countenance. There was no
movement of the air, nothing but the sound of rushing
feet stocking their muffled feet, the apparition of the face,
and the almost simultaneous extinguishing of the candle.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
All right, so the s is hitting the fan. The
poopoo was hitting the fan at this point.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Yeah, he could have kissed this ghost.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, and they've seen what possibly as a stable man,
an angry man, and maybe even the woman he murdered.
And there's cats. It's always scary.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
You hope it's a cat. It was something the size
of a cat.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Yet they're still in here. Here we go. In spite
of himself, Shorthouse uttered a little cry, nearly losing his balance,
as his aunt clung to him with her whole weight.
In one moment of real, uncontrollable terror. She made no sound,
but simply seized him bodily. Fortunately, however, she had seen nothing,
but had only heard the rushing feet for her control
(25:53):
returned almost at once, and he was able to disentangle
himself and strike a match. The shadows ran away on
all sides before the glare, and his aunt stooped down
and groped for the cigar case with a precious candle.
Then they discovered that the candle had not been blown
out at all. It had been crushed out. The wick
was pressed down into the wax, which was flattened, as
(26:15):
if by some smooth, heavy instrument. How his companion so
quickly overcame her terror, Shorthouse never properly understood, but his
admiration for her self control increased tenfold, and at that
same time served to feed his own dying flame, for
which he was undeniably grateful. Equally inexplicable to him was
the evidence of physical force they had just witnessed. He
(26:37):
at once suppressed the memories of stories he had heard
of physical mediums in their dangerous phenomena. For if these
were true, and either his aunt or himself was unwittingly
a physical medium, it meant that they were simply aiding
to focus the forces of a haunted house already charged
to the brim. It was like walking with unprotected lamps
among uncovered stores of gunpowder. So, with his little reflection
(27:00):
as possible, he simply ReLit the candle and went up
to the next floor. The arm in his trembled, it
is true, and his own tread was often uncertain. But
they went on with thoroughness, and after a search revealing nothing,
they climbed the last flight of stairs to the top floor.
Of all. Here they found a perfect nest of small
(27:20):
servants rooms with broken pieces of furniture, dirty cane bottom chairs,
chest of drawers, cracked mirrors, and decrepit bedsteads. The room
had low sloping ceilings already hung here and there with cobwebs,
small windows, and badly plastered walls. A depressing and dismal
region which they were glad to leave behind. Man, are
(27:46):
they gonna make it out?
Speaker 3 (27:48):
I don't know, Chuck, all right, let's find out. It
was on the stroke of midnight when they entered a
small room on the third floor, close to the top
of the stairs, and arranged to make themselves comfortable for
the remainder of their adventures. It was absolutely bare, and
was said to be the room then used as a
clothes closet into which the infuriated groom had chased his
(28:08):
victim and finally caught her outside Across the narrow landing
began the stairs leading up to the floor above and
the servants quarters where they had just searched. In spite
of the chilliness of the night. There was something in
the air of this room that cried out for an
open window. But there was more than this. Shorthouse could
only describe it by saying that he felt less master
(28:29):
of himself here than in any other part of the house.
There was something that acted directly on his nerves, tiring
the resolution, enfeebling the will. He was conscious of this
result before he had been in the room five minutes,
and it was just in the short time that they
stayed there that he suffered the wholesale depletion of his
vital forces, which was for himself the chief horror of
(28:52):
the whole experience. They put the candle on the floor
of the cupboard, leaving the door a few inches ajar,
so that there was no glare to confuse the eyes,
and no shadow to shift about on walls and ceiling.
Then they spread the cloak on the floor and sat
down to wait with their backs against the wall. Shorthouse
was within two feet of the door on to the landing.
(29:14):
His position commanded a good view of the main staircase
leading down into the darkness, and also of the beginning
of the servants stairs going to the floor above. The
heavy stick lay beside him within easy reach. The moon
was now high above the house. Through the open window,
they could see the comforting stars, like friendly eyes watching
in the sky. One by one, the clocks of the
(29:34):
town struck midnight, and when the sounds died away, the
deep silence of a windless night fell again over everything.
Only the boom of the sea, far away and lugubrious,
filled the air with hollow murmurs, lugubrious near big trouble,
undeclarated in Saint Deletrious.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Inside the house, the silence became awful, awful, he thought,
because any minute now it might be broken by sounds
of portending terror. The strain of waiting told more and
more severely on the nerves. They talked in whispers when
they talked at all, For their voices aloud sounded queer
and unnatural. A chilliness, not altogether due to the night
(30:16):
air invaded the room and made them cold. The influences
against them, whatever these might be, were slowly robbing them
of self confidence and the power of decisive action. Their
forces were on the wane, and the possibility of real
fear took on a new and terrible meaning. He began
to tremble for the elderly woman by his side, whose
pluck could hardly save her. Beyond a certain extent. He
(30:39):
heard the blood singing in his veins. It sometimes seemed
so loud that he fancied it prevented his hearing properly
certain other sounds that were beginning very faintly to make
themselves audible in the depths of the house. Every time
he fastened his attention on the sounds, they instantly ceased.
They certainly came no nearer. Yet he could not rid
himself of the idea that movement was going on somewhere
(31:01):
in the lower regions of the house. The drawing room floor,
where the doors had been so strangely closed, seemed too near.
The sounds were further off than that. He thought of
the great kitchen with the scurrying black beetles, and of
the dismal little scullery, But somehow or other it did
not seem to come from there either. Surely they were
(31:22):
not outside the house. Then suddenly the truth flashed into
his mind, and for the space of a minute he
felt as if his blood had stopped flowing and turned
to ice. The sounds were not downstairs at all. They
were upstairs, upstairs, somewhere among those horrid, gloomy little servants
rooms with their bits of broken furniture, low ceilings and
(31:44):
cramped windows, upstairs where the victim had first been disturbed
and stalked her to death. And the moment he discovered
where the sounds were, he began to hear them more clearly.
It was the sound of feet moving stealthily along the
passage over head, in and out among the rooms and
pasted the furniture.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
He turned quickly to steal a glance at the motionless
figure seated beside him to note whether she had shared
his discovery. The faint candlelight coming through the crack in
the cupboard door, through her strongly marked face into a
vivid relief against the white of the wall. But it
was something else that made him catch his breath and
stare again. An extraordinary something had come into her face
(32:25):
and seemed to spread over her features like a mask.
It smoothed out the deep lines and drew the skin
everywhere a little tighter, so that the wrinkles disappeared. It
brought into the face, with the sole exception of the
old eyes, an appearance of youth and almost of childhood.
He stared in speechless amazement, amazement that was dangerously near
(32:45):
to horror. It was his aunt's face, indeed, but it
was her face of forty years ago, the vacant, innocent
face of a girl. He had heard stories of that
strange effect of terror, which could wipe a human countenance
clean of other emotions, obliterating all previous expressions, but he
had never realized that it could be literally true, or
could mean anything so simply horrible as what he now saw.
(33:08):
For the dreadful signature of overmastering fear was written plainly
in that utter vacancy of the girlish face beside him,
And when feeling his intense gaze, she turned to look
at him. He instinctively closed his eyes tightly to shut
out the sight. Yet when he turned a minute later,
his feelings well in hand, he saw, to his intense
relief another expression. His aunt was smiling, and though the
(33:31):
face was deathly white, the awful veil had lifted and
the normal look was returning.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Anything wrong was all he could think of to say
at the moment, and the answer was eloquent, coming from
such an old woman.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
I feel cold and a little frightened.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
She whispered. He offered to close the window, but she
seized hold of him and begged him not to leave
her side, even for an instant. It's upstairs, I know,
she whispered, with an odd half laugh.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
But I can't possibly go up.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
But short, how else thought otherwise, Knowing that in action
lay their best hope of self control, he took the
brandy flask and poured out a glass of neat spirit,
stiff enough to help anybody over anything. It's a good move.
She swallowed it with a little shiver. His only idea
now was to get out of the house before her
collapse became inevitable. But this could not safely be done
(34:21):
by turning tail and running from the enemy, an action
was no longer possible. Every minute he was growing less
master of himself, and desperate. Aggressive measures were imperative without
further delay. Moreover, the action must be taken towards the enemy,
not away from it. The climax, if necessary and unavoidable,
(34:41):
would have to be faced boldly. He could do it now,
but in ten minutes he might not have the force
left to act for himself, much less for both. Upstairs,
the sounds were meanwhile becoming louder and closer, accompanied by
the occasional creaking of the boards. Someone was moving stille
healthily about, stumbling now and then awkwardly against the furniture,
(35:04):
Waiting a few moments to allow the tremendous dose of
spirits to produce its effect, and knowing this would last
but a short time under the circumstances, Shorthouse then quietly
got on his feet, saying in a determined voice, Now,
Aunt Julia, we'll go upstairs and find out what all
this noise is about. You must come too. It's what
(35:25):
we agreed. See he's gotten a little whiskey in his belly.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Yeah, he's a little drunk, and he's like.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Get your butt up here, right, You drug me into.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
This, yeah, Brandy says the day again, He picked up
his stick and went to the cupboard for the candle.
A limp form rose shakily beside him, breathing hard, and
he heard a voice say, very faintly something about being
ready to come. The woman's courage amazed him. It was
so much greater than his own. And as they advanced,
(35:58):
holding aloft the dripping candle, some subtle force exhaled from
this trembling, white faced old woman at his side. That
was the true source of his inspiration. It held something
really great that shamed him and gave him the support
without which he would have proved far less. Equal to
the occasion, they crossed the dark landing, avoiding with their
eyes the deep black space over the banisters. Then they
(36:21):
began to mount the narrow staircase to meet the sounds,
which minute by minute grew louder and nearer. About halfway
up the stairs, Aunt Julius stumbled, and Shorthouse turned to
catch her by the arm, and just at that moment
there came a terrific crash in the servant's corridor overhead.
It was instantly followed by a shrill, agonized scream that
was a cry of terror and a cry for help
(36:43):
melted into one. Before they could move aside or go
down a single step, someone came rushing along the passage overhead,
blundering horribly, racing madly at full speed, three steps at
a time down the very staircase where they stood. The
steps were light and uncertain, but behind them sounded the
heavier tread of another person, and the staircase seemed to shake.
(37:05):
Shorthouse and his companion just had time to flatten themselves
against the wall when the jumble of flying steps was
upon them, and two persons with the slightest possible interval
between them, dashed past at full speed. It was a
perfect whirlwind of sound, breaking in upon the midnight silence
of the empty building. The two runners, pursuer and pursued,
had passed clean through them where they stood, and already
(37:27):
worth a thud. The boards below had received the first one,
then the other. Yet they had seen absolutely nothing, not
a hand or an arm, or a face, or even
a shred of flying clothing. Then came a second's pause,
then the first one, the lighter of the two, obviously
the pursued one, ran with uncertain footsteps into the little
room which Shorthouse and his aunt had just left, the
(37:50):
heavier one following There was a sound of scuffly gasping
and smothered screaming, and then out on the landing came
the step of a single person treading.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
A dead silence followed for the space of half a minute,
and then was heard a rushing sound through the air.
It was followed by a dull, crashing thud in the
depths of the house below. On the stone floor of
the hall, utter silence reigned. After nothing moved. The flame
of the candle was steady, it had been steady the
whole time, and the air had been undisturbed by any
(38:22):
movement whatsoever. Palsied with terror, Aunt Julia, without waiting for
her companion, began fumbling her way downstairs. She was crying
gently to herself, and when Shorthouse put his arm round
her and half carried her, he felt that she was
trembling like a leaf. He went into the little room
and picked up the cloak from the floor and arm
(38:43):
in arm, walking very slowly, without speaking a word or
looking once behind them, they marched down the three flights
into the hall. In the hall, they saw nothing but
the whole way down the stairs, they were conscious that
someone followed them step by step. When they went back,
it was left behind, and when they went more slowly,
it caught them up. But never once did they look
(39:06):
behind to see. And at each turning of the staircase
they lowered their eyes for fear of the following horror
they might see upon the stairs above. With trembling hands,
Shorthouse opened the front door, and they walked out into
the moonlight and drew a deep breath of the cool
night air blowing in from the sea.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
Wow. They made it out.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Yeah, and sounds like the stable man threw the girl
over the banister once again.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
I have a feeling he does that every night, you
think so, or at the very least on the anniversary
of the night of the murder.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
And the how ghosts work?
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Yeah, creepy stuff, good stuff, good one.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
Congratulations, Congratulations to you too, sir, Jerry.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Fine Shorthouse, Jerry can't wait too. And you're a fine
aunt leaf shaky lady. Yeah, sure, Jerry can't wait to
hear the sound design always a treat for us.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Yeah, and everyone out there. If you like this, Algernon
Blackwood has a lot of other good stuff. Yeah, check
it out and have a really happy Halloween.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah, be safe out there.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com. Brought to you by the all new
twenty fourteen Toyota Corolla
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
Are You A Charlotte?
In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.