Bonus Episode - The First Day of Fall

'Ghost Story,' the podcast that unearths the spectral secrets from beyond the grave. In each episode, we bring you firsthand accounts of ghostly encounters, as told by those who have experienced the unexplained firsthand. Brace yourself for tales of restless spirits, haunted locations, and inexplicable phenomena. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, prepare to be captivated by the tales that will send shivers down your spine. Feel free to check out our sister podcasts, Bone Chilling Tales to Keep You Awake Podcast, A Truly Haunted Podcast, Forever Haunted Podcast and True Whispers a True Crime Podcast. See you on the next dreadful episode. #scarystories #realstories #horrorpodcasts are #horrorpodcasts #horrorpodcast #horror #horrormovies #podcast #horrorfilms #horrorfilm #podcasts #horrormovie #film #films #movies #movie #horrorcommunity #horrorfamily #damnedmovies #moviesofthedamned #horrorobsessed #horrorfans #halloween #horrornerd #horrorfanatic #horrorpod #horrorfan #slasher #paranormal #horrorjunkie #horrorpodcaster #horrorgram #horrorcomedy #scarystories #scary #creepy #horrorstories #horror #scaryfacts #creepypasta #creepyfacts #creepystories #creepyfact #scaryfact #horrormovies #halloween #conspiracytheory #conspiracy #horrorstory #scarymovie #scaryposts #conspiracytheories #scarythreads #spooky #scaryvideo #horrorfacts #paranormal #horrorfan #horrors #scarymemes #haunted #horrorfact #ghost   Warning: This podcast may be: frightening · scaring · hair-raising · terrifying · petrifying · spine-chilling · bloodcurdling · chilling · horrifying · alarming · appalling · daunting · formidable · fearsome · nerve-racking · unnerving · eerie · sinister   #murdermystery #bookstagram #death #buzzfeedunsolved #crimescene #truecrimepodcasts #missingperson #missing #halloween #crimejunkie #news #myfavoritemurder #spooky #supernatural

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the ghost Story, the podcast that on earths
the spectral secrets from beyond the grave. In each episode,
we bring you first hand accounts of ghostly encounters, as
told by those who've experienced the unexplained firsthand. Brace yourself

(00:27):
for tales of restless spirits, haunted locations, and inexplicable phenomena.
Whether you're a sceptic or a believer, prepared to be
captivated by the tales that will send shivers down your spine.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Welcome to a ghost story podcast, the weekly whisper of
tales told in the glow of moonlight and the hush
between heartbeats. Each week we invite you to listen as
ordinary moments twist into extraordinary apparitions, and every heartbeat lingers
a little longer with the unknown. From whispered legends in

(01:32):
old towns to chilling true ghost stories, these episodes are
crafted to haunt, to spark your imagination, and to remind
us that some echoes never truly fade, so dim the lights,
settle in, and let the stories find you. If you're
listening late at night, you're exactly where you're supposed to be.

(01:56):
Subscribe to never miss a tale and prepare for the
glow of the unseen to illuminate your headphones. Welcome to
a ghost story podcast. Since today is officially the first
day of fall, let's welcome fall with a special bonus episode.

(02:18):
This chilling story is longer than usual and just creepy
enough to let a drizzle of the full chill seep
into your bones. Are you ready to get this bonus
episode underway? I sure am. Sit back, relax unless you
are driving, of course, and let's start this spooky tale.

(02:49):
People think cemeteries are quiet. They aren't, not the old ones,
not the kind with crooked headstones worn thin by two
centuries of weather and grief. They hum, they breathe, They
make small animal noises when the ground settles. Roots rub,

(03:13):
and bones frost shifting in the dirt, a robin scolding
itself to sleep. Ten plus years working here in the
sounds stitched themselves into me so tightly I could tell
you the time by the way the wind moved through
the cedars. It was six winters ago, the cold kind

(03:34):
that eats the edges off your ears, that something finally
decided to speak back. I stayed late after a burial
because I always do. I don't like to finish the
job with the diesel roar of the back hole while
the family still near, their faces bright with wet and

(03:55):
shock their shoulders, making that shape grief makes. Grief is
love made homeless. Someone once told me, in this place,
the homeless gather. I try to be polite. The morners
slid away into the dark, like a small river returning

(04:16):
to ground. The grave was a black mouth waiting for
the last scoop. I killed the back hole and waited
twenty minutes, my breath a pale ghost climbing out of
me and vanishing. The night wrapped the cemetery in a
thin shell of glass. It promised stillness. It lied. I

(04:41):
brought a bucket around for the final paw. Dirt clattered
against the coffin lid and muffled, drumming the sound I hate.
Most in the world would accept in wait the earth,
teaching someone it were always weigh more. I crested the
hill for one last pass, and my foot lipped off
the pedal. The backo coughed, choked, died instant silence. It

(05:07):
didn't even rattle down, It just stopped, like something pinched.
The machine's throat shut fitting because what I saw turned
my own airway into a knotted horse. They floated over
the open grave. Orbs, that's what people call them when
they're being cute. These weren't ornaments on a Christmas tree.

(05:32):
These were wounds in the dark where light was leaking
out five seven hard to count when they pulsed, fading
to the edge of nothing, then swelling to white hot
pinpricks that left after images stamped on my eyes. They bobbed.
They rotated in a slow orbit, patient like vultures deciding

(05:54):
when carrion becomes dinner. I should have called someone, even breathe.
I had the feeling you get when you walk in
on a private argument. Intimacy turned dangerous. The orbs didn't
see me, not at first. They circled ten seconds per loop,

(06:15):
regular as the second hand, the kind of slow that
makes you hyper aware of your own heartbeat. I could
hear mine in my ears, a damp drumstick, and underneath
it the tiny tinting of frost breaking on the grass.
They turned together, not away from me, At me. My

(06:36):
scalp tightened, the hair at my neck stood up hard
enough to hurt. The orbs bled outward at their edges
light thinning like, distorting the air, like august heat over asphalt.
Then they didn't look like orbs anymore. They looked like eyes,
not seeing in the human way, but registering, ranging, expressing

(07:00):
a curiosity with no kindness in it. Hey, I whispered,
because people say dumb two soft things to thunder. The
word puffed white from my lips and drifted. One of
the lights darted. It moved with such sudden hunger that

(07:22):
the rest of them answered, snapping to a faster orbit.
The air went cold in a different way, deep cold,
marrow cold, the kind of cold. You don't tell anyone that,
because it sounds like a metaphor until you can't feel
your hands. Every light left a filament trailing behind itself,

(07:45):
thin silver threads lacing the grave mouth, like a cobweb
being spun by something that had never seen a spider.
I fumbled for the ignition. The key turned, the engine
did not respond. A machine is supposed to be predictable.
It sat and the dark with me, like it was scared,

(08:07):
or like something enormous had one hand on the battery
and one on my sternum and squeezed both at once.
Not funny, I said, because fear makes you sarcastic. The
lights didn't care. They were busy. The filaments thickened into streamers.

(08:28):
The streamers criss crossed until the opening below became a lattice.
The top layer stroked the dirt like fingers testing a
drum skin. Then the whole net pulled. The grave shifted.
The ground isn't supposed to do that. You see it
in earthquakes, not in a square of earth. You dug

(08:51):
yourself yesterday. The grave mouth yawned, wider, dirt slumping inward
with a soft roar. The sound echoed off stones and names,
off dates and epithets, and came back wrong, like a
recording of itself played three seconds late. The orbs slapped bright, bright, brighter,

(09:11):
and I heard something new, breathing, not mine, not animal.
The ground was breathing. The grave inhaled, and a stink
came up. Wet wood, old flowers gone to slime, a
coppery tang that made my molar's ache stop. I said

(09:34):
to orbs and dirt and the entire stupid night, my
voice jerking on the word. I climbed down from the
back hole, like I was stepping off a roof. My
boots slid, bit slid again. The flashlight clipped to my
belt shook. I thumbed it on the beam, cutting a
sickly cone into the dark. I pointed it at the lights.

(09:59):
They scattered, not away, not fearful, delighted. They streaked through
the beam, and the beam bowed, warping, growing hairline splits
of color, like a prism being tortured. The nearest light
hit the lens, and the lens screamed. If you've never
heard glass scream, you won't believe me. It sounded like

(10:22):
a violin string tightened until it snaps. Accept It didn't snap.
It resonated a squeal that drove straight into my jaw.
The flashlight burst with a small pop, and the smell
of toasted electronics hot dots burned across my vision. I
swore and flung the dead cylinder. It rolled to the

(10:45):
grave's edge and stopped exactly there, balanced like a coin. Okay,
my mouth had gone caught and dry. Okay, okay. I
took one step toward the grave to salvage the flashlight
out of habit, because habit saves us from thinking. And

(11:05):
the earth under my boot moved sideways, not a collapse
a shove. It threw me to the right like a bouncer.
I went down hip first, elbow next, sharp, pain, hot
and bright, and skidded into a patch of frost hardened
grass that burned my palm. Their orbs responded like sharks

(11:27):
who'd scented a drop of blood in an entire ocean.
They veered. Something brushed my ankle, not grass, not thread,
A hand cold as riverstone, strong as reebar. It clamped
and pulled my boot heel dug a furrow, dirt piled
against my calf, like hands helping a grave. Wanted me,

(11:51):
really truly wanted me, and not in the romantic way
ghosts on TV want you to know their names. It
wanted my weight. It wanted the mechanical fact of me
to balance someone else's absence. I kicked. I mean the
animal kick your body does when you're in water and

(12:13):
the water decides to have a mouth. I kicked, and
I connected with nothing, no give, no bone. The grip
didn't loosen. Another clamp closed on my other ankle, and
for a stupid half second, I pictured toddlers begging their
dad not to leave a party. Then the grip hurt

(12:34):
a ring of pain, like wire cutting skin, and the
picture tore. I clawed the ground, fingers, finding cold roots,
slick as tendon. I yanked and crawled and got nowhere,
not even a compromise inch let go. I shouted, and
my voice broke into three pieces and went three directions

(12:57):
at once. The orbs hammered so bright I could see
my own skeleton, lip under my skin, the hot white
X ray of panic above the grave. Shapes began resolving,
not bodies, impressions of bodies pressed into the dark, like
someone laid a sheet over figures and told the light

(13:18):
to guess at details. A slope of shoulder, a suggestion
of jaw. Three of them, one taller, one hawk faced
and narrow, one smaller by a head child small. Their
edges crawled with static. Their mouths didn't open, but sound
came anyway, coming from the dirt, from the wood under

(13:41):
the dirt, from the cavity under the wood, A chorus
built out of decay and pressure. I don't know the
words for the sound. My spine knew them, so did
whatever part of the brain still remembers night warnings from caves.
Do not answer, do not even think a reply. I answered,

(14:05):
I'm sorry, useless, I said it again because people apologized
to gestures. The hand on my ankle jerked hard, The
world tilted, The grave balanced me at its rim like
an appetizer. I tasted that copper stink again, stronger, now

(14:28):
waited with a sweet rot. My elbow screamed, and I
ignored it and scrabbled sideways, fingers plunging into a seam
of something softer than dirt, moss cloth. I didn't want
to know. I hauled and slid, and miracle pulled one
leg free, pain bloomed ankle to knee, hot, then cold.

(14:50):
I jabbed my free heel into the edge of the
grave and shoved against the opposite hand. It slipped once,
gain once stuck. The shape above the grave brightened, the
smaller one tipping its head like a question you. The
back hole stuttered, It coughed like an old man. It

(15:12):
ground and caught. Headlights blinked on in anemic yellow squares.
The machine didn't roll, It shook shutters, traveling its frame,
metal buzzing against metal. The bucket rose three inches and stopped.
The orbs turned toward it like dogs, hearing a key
at the door. For a second one. Everything loosened, the

(15:36):
grip on my ankle, the gravity of the grave, the
breath of the dirt. I did not waste that second.
I threw myself backward, in a move my chiropractor would
have called a career. I landed on my spine so
hard the stars went out and came back again, bang bright.

(15:56):
The world took a huge breath and forgot to exhale.
I crab scrambled heels and hands, idiot with survival, until
my back hit a headstone. The stone did not move.
I used it like a railing and stood. The orbs screamed.
It wasn't a sound that traveled through air, It traveled

(16:20):
through teeth. The cemetery turned into a tuning fork, struck
by a god who hated music. Headstones vibrated a shivering course.
A thin moan rose from the ground, as if all
the names here had signed one long complaint. The orbs streaked,
not to me this time, but pass me so close

(16:44):
I felt my skin shrink from the cold. They dove
at the back hoe. The engine heaved like an animal
trying to get up with a broken leg. The hood
bowed inward, as if struck by fists too fast to
see a fresh hiss fuel steam ghosted up from the
engine bay and coiled around the lights. The smell of

(17:07):
hot oil and something else. The cringe of hair turned
my stomach. Stop, I yelled again, because my vocabulary had
collapsed to a list of useless commands. Stop enough. The
tallest of the three figures rippled, its outline, juttering. It

(17:29):
stretched and distorted, reaching and for a sliverd instant, something
cut through the interference, a long jaw, a deep eye socket,
a mouth set in a line heavy with an emotion
beyond the human scale, grief, big as weather. Then it
snapped back to blur. The small figure's head turned toward me,

(17:52):
haloed with a meteoric trailing of the orbs. The light slowed,
slowed more. They drew themselves tight, hardening into clean, sharp
marbles of light studded into the air. I could see
my reflected face in the nearest one, a wet eyed,
dirt smeared mask, mouth open, animal said. I did the

(18:14):
bravest thing I've ever done, and I do not recommend it.
I stepped forward, one step, then another, close enough to
feel the heatless brightness on my cheeks, close enough to
smell nothing. Light has no smell, or wanted one anyway.
I get it, I said, hoarsely, though I did not.

(18:37):
I get it. I'll finish, I will do it right.
I I'll speak the names. It was absurd bargaining with
what had just tried to drag me under. But grief
makes children of us, and children make promises. The lights
held a tiny hiss, answered, steam escaping frozen leaves, shifting

(19:02):
no a word shape without consonance, A vowal pressed into
my ear by pressure. Then the orbs released the back
hole with an almost petulant pop. The machine shuddered, idle.
The figures under the static dimmed, thinned, bled back into
ordinary dark. The lattice of filaments collapsed like wet silk,

(19:27):
vanishing into ground that was suddenly offensively still. I stayed
where I was for a long count of fifty, then eighty,
then a hundred, the numbers refusing to behave. The pain
in my ankle settled into a bright ring. The skin
there already swollen against the boot leather, elbow bleeding, palm, raw, pride,

(19:56):
not part of the body somehow still bleed. When I
could make my legs be legs again, I limped to
the back hole and put my hand on its hood,
the way you'd touch a horse after thunder. Good machine,
I said, like a lunatic. I climbed in and turned
the key. It coughed and held the bucket lifted. I

(20:20):
filled the grave slowly, gently, an insulted nurse. Every drop
of dirt got its own apology. I tamp what I
could by hand with a shovel handle, sting in my palm.
I whispered the last name on the headstone with each
shovel load, like I was stitching something shut. Each syllable

(20:41):
assuit you when the hole was a mound. I killed
the engine. The night didn't applaud, It didn't do anything
an audience would do. It reset to its previous setting.
Wind twig, the far off bark of a dog talking
to ghosts. Back in the garage, I slammed the back

(21:03):
hole door with the kind of care you only see
right after you almost die. I bandage my elbow with
a roll of paper towels and duct tape, because men
who work alone invent medicine. In the office trailer, I
poured coffee the color of an argument, and held the

(21:23):
mug until my hands stopped being instruments and returned to
their day jobs as body parts. I dreamt hard that night,
the kind of dreams that sit on your chest, dirt, ribs,
lace with wire, voices under water. I woke to three
missed calls and a voicemail from an unknown number. The

(21:47):
message was exactly five seconds of open air, then a
whisper so faint it could have been a fault in
the line or the line itself. Learning how to be
language home and a click. I went back to the
plot the next morning with a hose, a shovel, and

(22:07):
a wheelbarrow of clean soil to top things off. Sunlight
made everything stupid, bright, reasonable, harmless. It was almost funny.
I watered the mound until it sheen, shivered and sagged
a little, like bread, learning to be loaf. When I
stepped around the new stone, I noticed the one to

(22:28):
its left, same last name, same font, worn a heaven, husband, wife,
their child, the new grave now tucked between them like
a late correction reunion. I said aloud, because optimism is

(22:48):
a jacket you sometimes put on inside the house family.
I watered until the hose kinked and the precious screamed,
and I fixed it without looking away from the names.
I don't tell this one to people who come asking

(23:09):
for tales from the graveyard. I give them shadows that
run between stones, that mean little. I give them wind
that says almost words. I do not tell them that
something reached for me with a grip that intended to keep.
I do not tell them the ground breathes. I don't

(23:31):
tell them about the three shapes that assemble themselves out
of light, like grief learning how to have a face.
But at dusk, when the sun flattens and the stones
throw long versions of themselves across the grass, I sometimes
walk to that row and stand with the holes and listen.

(23:52):
If the orbs are only truths of moisture and lens
and my exhausted brain, fine, If they are something else.
If love is violent enough to pull, if grief is
hungry enough to try and make trade, then I want
to be the person who felt the grip and said
the names. Anyway, And there are nights don't ask me

(24:16):
which I won't tell you. When the bacco refuses to
start until I whisper I'm here, and the engine finally agrees,
and we both pretend that it's because of the temperature.
Nights when the dirt settles with a sigh that sounds
too human. Nights when a child sized shadow stands in

(24:39):
the maple's long tail and nods once sharp as a command.
Those nights I finish quick. I keep the shovel close,
knuckles white, and I do not look directly at the
light if it starts to unfurl. I know what it
can do. I know what it wants. And when I

(25:03):
lock up coffee as black as newly turned earth, clamped
in my fist, I catch my reflection in the office
trailer window for a second one. I swear my own
eyes are wrong. White, hot, pinprick, bright, patient watching me
watch myself, relentless, waiting for me to blink first,