April 1, 2025 • 63 mins
A storm is coming on this edition of Octoberpod AM classic horror podcast with tales of dark angels and the legend of ghost town massacre. Your horror host Edward October is also on hand to share a memoir of the living dead.
First up: The angel said a storm is coming … in ANGEL by Annie Morgan (The Podcast Inside Your House). Then, Edward October shares "what Night of the Living Dead means to me" Plus: An all-new narration of THE LITTLEST ANGEL, the legend (based on fact) of a town deserted after massacre. Featuring special guests Arthur Williams (Family Plot podcast) and Jen (Our True Crime Podcast).
Fear not (or ... on second thought ... be VERY afraid) because we're serving upterrifying tales of angels you never heard in Sunday school. Adjust your halos, fluff your wings, and board up the house because a storm is blowing in on this edition of Octoberpod AM: the retro horror podcast made by humans.
// PROMOS
Rogue Transmissions Halfway to Halloween Hullabaloo, The Podcast Inside Your House, Spine Chillers & Serial Killers and Apocalypse Radio (Season 2)
// FOLLOW
Find more true, true-ish & classic horror / paranormal content by following us on social media!
Bluesky: @octoberpod.bsky.social // Twitter: @OctoberpodVHS //
YouTube: Octoberpod Home Video // Instagram: @OctoberpodVHS //
TikTok: @octoberpod
Or follow us on the worldwide web at OctoberpodVHS.com
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/octoberpod-am--5482497/support.
First up: The angel said a storm is coming … in ANGEL by Annie Morgan (The Podcast Inside Your House). Then, Edward October shares "what Night of the Living Dead means to me" Plus: An all-new narration of THE LITTLEST ANGEL, the legend (based on fact) of a town deserted after massacre. Featuring special guests Arthur Williams (Family Plot podcast) and Jen (Our True Crime Podcast).
Fear not (or ... on second thought ... be VERY afraid) because we're serving upterrifying tales of angels you never heard in Sunday school. Adjust your halos, fluff your wings, and board up the house because a storm is blowing in on this edition of Octoberpod AM: the retro horror podcast made by humans.
// PROMOS
Rogue Transmissions Halfway to Halloween Hullabaloo, The Podcast Inside Your House, Spine Chillers & Serial Killers and Apocalypse Radio (Season 2)
// FOLLOW
Find more true, true-ish & classic horror / paranormal content by following us on social media!
Bluesky: @octoberpod.bsky.social // Twitter: @OctoberpodVHS //
YouTube: Octoberpod Home Video // Instagram: @OctoberpodVHS //
TikTok: @octoberpod
Or follow us on the worldwide web at OctoberpodVHS.com
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/octoberpod-am--5482497/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
I Edward October. The sound you hear is midnight in
a quiet American suburb. This is the start of October.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Pod.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
There's a god in the pool behind my house. At
least I thought it was a god.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
It arrived near the end of October, in the dead
of night, while the neighborhood slept, Harper was awakened by
the sound of something hitting the window, tossing off his covers.
He jumped to his feet and looked outside to a
world illuminated by starlight. There on the ground, a twitching
pile of jet black feathers lay writhing. Harper mistook the
(00:53):
thing for a crow or a raven at first, after all,
it wasn't the first time a bird had smashed in
to the window. Harper, still half asleep, thought about helping it.
And then it began to scream, a caw, a death rattle,
a prayer to eternity to end its misery. But as
(01:21):
seconds passed, the raspiness of its cry began to fade,
while the volume only grew. Its cadence changed to something
resembling the horn of a train. Getting closer. The grass
around the creature decayed to create the outline of a
perfect triangle, and Harper became fixated on its eyes and
(01:42):
how they reflected the light from the moon. One could
hear flesh and feathers starting to tear open along the
pitiable beast's back. The sky provided just enough clarity to
make out what Harper would come to wish he'd never seen.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Hands, several of them, each digit on each hand, writhing
and wriggling like a tadpole that had found itself on land.
After a few moments of struggle, the hand touched earth
and began to drag themselves, the feathered carcass and Harper's
(02:23):
horrified attention toward the decrepit swimming pool. Its fingers now
moved in a rhythmic pattern more commonly associated with the
feet of a millipede. The joints made a wet, crackling sound,
while the hole from where the hands had been berthed
sputtered some.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Dark, heavy liquid. The creature made its way under the
fence surrounding the abandoned above ground pool. It stopped at
the edge of the pool and positioned its hands in
a circle below its torn feathered body pushed it upward.
Long sickly arms with joints revealed themselves. As the body
(03:04):
continued its ascent higher into the evening air, it pushed
its body up just enough to flop into the pool,
and Harper lost sight of it.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Don't ask me why, because I don't know myself. But
I went after it. I put on a jacket and
socks and shoes, no hesitation. I brought a flashlight, but
I didn't really need it. The moon and stars were
bright that night, and I went to get a closer look.
I should have been scared, but I felt safe, more
(03:46):
safe than I'd felt perhaps ever before in my life.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Harper didn't go out to the pool much. No one did.
It had come with the house in dire need of repair,
but at the bottom of a long list of other
things that needed urgent fixing, the pool was always considered
a problem for another time. Just a few steps into
the yard and Harper was chilled down to his very marrow.
But when he peered over the edge of the water,
(04:13):
he felt warmer just looking at the thing. Its bony
arms were hidden away once again, and it crawled around
on the surface.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
I could get a better look at its wings now.
They were huge but.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Shattered, so it used its many hands to move it
wasn't cold enough for ice, but Harper had to touch
the surface to fully understand what he was seeing. The
pool was still liquid, putrid, stagnant water, but the celestial
creature before him crawled on the surface as if it
were solid. Harper said, hello.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
To it, I was trying to break the ice.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Get it.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
The creature, unsurprised by Harper's presence, didn't stop what it
was doing. When it finally spoke, it used the boy's
own voice.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
Hello, be not afraid.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
You sound just like me.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
That must have been scary, unnerving any of those things.
Speaker 6 (05:08):
Right, No, it was exciting.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
I asked it what it was doing.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
No, the first question Harper asked was why are you
walking on the water? But then Harper asked what really
should have been the first question, what are you?
Speaker 3 (05:25):
By then, my eyes had adjusted more to the night,
and I was able to see the thing more clearly.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yes, it had the head of a bird, but it
looked more like an eagle than a raven. Its eyes
reflected the moon like the eyes of a cat. Its
body was long and snakelike to accommodate its many hands,
and the viscous liquid that had been leaking out where
the arms popped out had finally slowed to a trickle.
(05:55):
It was like the creature was wearing the carcase of
a bird as a disguise.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
I'm an angel, he said.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
I decided that it was a he because he sounded
like me.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Of course, real angels are neither male nor female, but.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
I didn't know that. I'm just a kid.
Speaker 7 (06:16):
Angel.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Oh Written especially for October pod by Annie Morgan, co
creator of the podcast Inside Your House, from an original
idea by Madeline Zeitsoff, narrated by Edward October and starring
(06:40):
Arthur Williams, co host of Family Plot podcast as Harper.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Anyway, finding out what he was didn't surprise me at all.
I felt just so safe around him, so drawn to him.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
That's why Harper told the angel he'd help him however
he could. And then the angel told Harper to help
him hide. He said he was trying to catch a
frog or a tadpole. And then he finally opened his eyes.
All of them they dotted his entire body, some large
(07:19):
and bulging, some little more than pinpricks, some partially obscured
behind feathers, but all of them glowing and flashing the
most awful colors.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
I'm running out of time, so hurry quickly go into
your house, grab something sharp, whatever is closest, and meet
me back out here, he.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Said, And so Harper came back out with a kitchen
knife in hand.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
This lovely, bright, beautiful creature needed my help, and I
wanted to help it, no matter what.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Such an accommodating child.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
I need you to cut yourself, not deep, just enough
to spill some blood in the water without hesitation.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
The boy sliced his hand, because that's what they do
in the movies for things like this, important things, blood,
oaths and the like. Harper watched the red liquid, which
looked black under the night sky, chip chip into the water.
It was instantaneous. The angels sank, and only just in
(08:25):
time too. The second he was completely submerged, sirens cried
out in the distance. It was a sound similar to
the screech the angel had made when he first fell
into the yard.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Only this time I felt afraid.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Harper hid next to the dented plastic pool side and
didn't dare to speak or even breathe. Something was coming.
Had it not been the middle of the night, and
had it not been coming from the wrong direction, he
would have thought it was the sun. All he saw
was fire. He closed his eyes, praying for it to pass.
(09:12):
Surely helping the angel would amplify his prayers. Something flew
above him, but it was so bright it hurt his
eyes even with them closed.
Speaker 7 (09:23):
There was a.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Rhythmic wind, something huge flapping above the house, something that
must have been the size of an aeroplane. The noise
it made was deafening. It was what Harper imagined the
trumpets at the end of the world would sound like,
like a tornado siren that taps directly into your worst
(09:43):
fears and pulls them out. If the earth were to
end in a nuclear apocalypse, then this might be the
sound that would signal the bombs. This was the sound
of the end times. Then it was gone. Harper didn't
(10:07):
open his eyes for a long time. A long time.
It felt like an eternity. He was afraid he'd wake
up in a void. But when he finally did, he
was still in the yard, still up against the lip
of the pool. He stood to check on his new
friend and saw the water steaming. But there at the
(10:32):
bottom was the Angel.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
I began to think of him as mine then, because
I'd save him and I warranted him to save me.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
He rose up from the bottom. The black gore around
his hands washed off into the pool, mixing with Harper's
blood and the blood of a few frogs that now
floated dead on the surface.
Speaker 5 (11:00):
Thank you, child, you've done something miraculous today. Now go
back to sleep.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
The next day, all of the frogs and tadpoles were
gone from the pool, and the water looked clearer, though
lit by the sunrise, it was blood red. Harper saw
his angel in delight for the first time then, and
he asked the boy if he could help him accomplish
his mission. But now his voice had a gravelier, almost
(11:28):
plemy quality. It sounded like Harper whenever he was sick.
The phrase frog in the throat comes to mind.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
And it had made me wonder where they had all gone,
the frogs. I mean?
Speaker 1 (11:42):
To that question, the angel simply explained that on Earth,
angels have to eat something that he'd need Harper's help doing.
As the sun rose higher, Harper could see that his
new friend's wounds had healed, and his arms now slid
efforts from the holes in his feathered hide, extending and
(12:03):
retracting as he used them to swim. His extra eyes,
which he kept secret, were closed most of the time.
His feathers were dark brown in the daylight, with bits
of gold sprinkled throughout, and his face was now hawk like.
He instructed the boy in a voice that now sounded
(12:25):
more like sick than like Harper, and told him to
catch him some flies to eat to day, so that
he could try and heal his wings. Harper made honey
traps with coffee cups and scattered them out on the
seldom used part of the lawn. But being so late
in the year, he worried that the bugs might not
be biting, but his angel assured him that there was
(12:48):
a heat wave coming and the bugs would be all right.
The angel was soon proven right. Coming up out of
the grass were dozens of flies buzzing around These little
traps accumulated countless flies, mosquitoes, gnats, and other assorted creepy crawleys,
which Harper dumped into the water, washing the writhing masses
(13:11):
into the pool. The water had stayed red, but not
as bold or red as it had been in the sun.
Harper marveled at the fact that angels could bleed too.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
There was something so satisfying about knowing my blood was
mixing with his, like I would become holier by association.
I wanted to ask my angel if he'd help me
because I helped him, you know, help me be forgiven
for my sins.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
And so Harper asked the angel that very thing. The
angel assured the boy that he'd give the Master his
highest recommendation on all matters of sin and forgiveness. Then
he released the boy from his service for the remainder of.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
The day, knowing that he was well fed and healing.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
It was a golden afternoon that day, and had the
trees not already shed their leaves, one would have sworn
it was summer. But there was death in the air.
Harper could smell it the second he stepped outside. Then
death's presence was confirmed by the hushed and anguished conversations
coming from next door. Harper peered over the fence and
(14:26):
saw his neighbors. The entire family huddled around the chicken coop.
The kids were distraught, the adults mad. The boy yelled
over the fence to see if everyone was okay, only
to find out that something had gotten into the neighbor's
chicken coop. They'd had six chickens all were now dead.
(14:47):
Harper went to the edge of the property, trying to
get a look at the chickens. What he saw was
covered in flies. Still, it was gruesome enough to make
him feel ill. The next time he saw the angel,
it was the first thing he spoke of.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Our property was big enough that I didn't have to
worry about my neighbors overhearing me, even in the daylight.
Also big enough that we didn't have to smell that
chicken coop very often. Anyway, I talked to my angel
about it as he swam laps in the pool.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
The angel was now able to swim while holding his
wings up out of the water. Harper told the angel
about the flies, told him that there were so many
flies on the chickens it looked almost as if the
flies had slaughtered them.
Speaker 8 (15:33):
No child did something much worse.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
I'm afraid he now sounded nothing like Harper, which made
the boy sad.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
He must be using his real voice.
Speaker 9 (15:45):
Now doesn't have a plague coming. But I can't do
anything about that. I just need you to bring me eggs.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
And Harper did as he was told. He snuck into
the chicken coop as soon as it got dark and
grabbed as many as he could find. The dead chickens
had been moved, but there were still piles of flies
feasting on the blood and gore left behind.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
I got out as fast as I could. Looking at
it still made me feel sick.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
When Harper dumped the eggs in the pool, he figured
that the angel was probably going to eat them, so
he decided not to stick around.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
The idea of an angel having to eat food the
same way we do made me feel strange.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Yes, eating does seem like a vulgar act, an act
somehow beneath the likes of an angel. Harper had never
felt so sick as he did. The next morning, he
had red spots all over his body, and as the
day wore on, they opened up into bloody sores. He
waited until his parents left for work, then he went
(16:55):
to the pool. The boy's throat was so raw he
could hardly speak, but without even croaking out the words
help me, the angel said, my.
Speaker 5 (17:06):
Child, Of course, of course I will help.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Harper wanted to ask the angel if he could heal him,
and as if he'd heard the boy's thoughts, the angel said.
Speaker 8 (17:19):
I can do better and heal you. I can baptize you.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
The angel led Harper to the pool. The boy dragged
himself up the ladder, using the very last of his strength,
and then splashed in. The angel caught Harper with his long,
long arms dotted with glowing, madly staring eyes, some slitted
(17:51):
like the eyes of a cat, and held the boy close.
Speaker 8 (17:56):
Think of all your si, he said, so.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
I thought of cheating off Becky Rogers in my math class.
I thought of stealing a bunch of red bulls from
seven to eleven. But worst of all, I thought of
my little sister Elizabeth. I thought about babysitting her. I
thought about letting her go to her friend Sarah's house
across the street. Mom and Dad let her do that.
All the time, I thought about how I should have
(18:27):
walked her there, I held her hand maybe. I thought
of how if I'd just stayed with her long enough,
I could have seen the car coming. I thought of
being forgiven, forgiven by my parents first of all, and
then being forgiven by Jesus. I thought of all the
(18:52):
bad thoughts I'd had because of the things they'd said
to me. I thought about getting into heaven now, when
I'd been planning on ending up in hell for so long.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
The angel lowered the boy down. The water was warm
and smelled of copper. It splashed away all of Harper's
sores and healed his skin, and when he pulled the
boy out, he was like brand new. The next day,
(19:35):
Harper went over to his pool, but before he did,
his mother told him to be careful in the yard.
It was the first time she'd spoken to him in
quite a while. The boy was happy. There was a
storm brewing, and Harper worried about the angel being alone
in the cold, but the angel said he only needed
(19:56):
one last thing from him and he'd be all healed up.
He said he needed to be set free. He said
he couldn't leave the pool without Harper's permission. Well, Harper
rushed to the shed to get an axe er well
a nice sturdy hatchet. They still had hours of daylight left,
but the storm clouds were so intense it looked like
(20:17):
twilight was approaching. Without hesitation, he chopped the side of
the pool. Water rushed out, and the boy hurried to
demolish one side utterly.
Speaker 5 (20:29):
It felt good to destroy something.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
The angel slipped through the hole in the pool with
the gushing water and shook himself off. Water flooded the
yard then, and Harper's parents began yelling something from inside
the house. The wind stole their words. The first splashes
of rain started. The angel stood to his glorious full height,
(20:57):
and for the first time hard first saw his wings unfurl.
There were six, though they weren't broken anymore. The feathers
were falling off. The angel flapped his wings, shaking off
the remaining feathers like a November wind, stripping naked the
bowels of their most stubborn autumn leaves. The boy's parents
(21:21):
were running outside now as the sky darkened, yelling at
Harper to get away, but the boy only yelled back.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Don't worry, He's an angel.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
The feathers were now fully gone, exposing leathery bat like
wings beneath. Harper hoped his angel was okay. His face
was changing now too, the eyes on either side of
his nose growing farther apart and burning like coals of fire,
(21:53):
with new ones sprouting up all over his strange body.
The rain was falling fast, are now faster, and the
boy held up his hand to shield himself from the
rain drops, which streamed down his face and were.
Speaker 7 (22:08):
Deep red blood.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
It was raining blood. Harper fell to his knees in
total shock as drops of crimson fell from the sky
and colored the world with its awful stain.
Speaker 5 (22:26):
Thank you for helping me change good word.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
The angel, tall and magnificent yet terrible as heartache, stepped
between Harper and his parents. Someone began screaming next door,
and then all at once, the screams could be heard everywhere.
Harper looked up, his eyes stinging from the hot rain
of blood, and saw through a gap in the clouds
(22:53):
that the moon was out around at the stars. It
was three p m. Easter in daylight time. Harper's angel
is a beast, whatever it was now stepped up to
Harper's parents and spoke, using all the voices of the damned.
(23:41):
Monsters do have their place in the zoo, in your nightmares,
in the deep, in your favorite horror movies, but not
on your phone during an ad break, Politically motivated interests
are seeking to influence you through the ads placed on
this podcast. Hi, I'm your host Edward October, reminding you
(24:04):
that we have very limited control over the ads you
hear on October Pod. Please remember that only the ads
and promos I read with my own voice, carry the
endorsement of Edward October and October Pod. Furthermore, I and
the makers of October Pod repudiate any entity advertised which
(24:25):
seeks to promote hatred, anti American or anti democratic sentiments,
or the spread of misinformation. Now with that in mind,
October Pod will return after this brief ad break.
Speaker 8 (24:41):
Somewhere the sun shines, Somewhere the birds sing the glory
of a new dawn. Somewhere it's spring again. But here,
here it's always Halloween. It's the Rogue Transmissions Halfway to Halloween.
Speaker 10 (24:59):
Hullaballoop, Rogue Transmissions and Unhinged Anthology of Indie Podcasts is
invading your streaming device to throw a.
Speaker 8 (25:11):
Hell raising halfway to Halloween party.
Speaker 11 (25:16):
Featuring all of your indie podcasting favorites, including Rue Crime,
chick Lid, October pod Our, True Crime Podcast, Pitney and
Amelia's Bitch and Boutique, Spine Chillers and Serial Killers, Serial Knapper,
Twisted and Uncourked, and Witch's Talking Tarot. It's coming Tuesday,
(25:40):
April twenty ninth to this podcast. That's right, The Rogue
Transmissions Halfway to Halloween Hullabaloo is coming to the podcast
you're listening to right now on Tuesday, April twenty ninth,
twenty twenty five. Rogue Transmissions. Rogue Transmissions. Rogue Transmissions have
(26:01):
way to Halloween, Hello Aloon. List of participating podcasts may
vary to the external yourself enjoy. Rogue Transmissions responsible for prohibiting.
Speaker 12 (26:11):
Day ought to make the day to time changes the
first day of summer.
Speaker 13 (26:14):
What, well, it's eight o'clock and it's still light.
Speaker 5 (26:18):
A lot of good the extra daylight does us.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
That bastard daylight savings time. When you hear this, the
shittification and the damnable blight on our existence that is
DST will have been in effect for most of the
US of A for just about a month. I hate
this pushing forward of the clock's hands for so many reasons,
but mostly because no one knows what it's for, and
(26:42):
it seems increasingly like some bullshit concocted by early to bed,
early to rise. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps if
you arrive on time, you're late type A personality motherfiers
to enslave the rest of us long suffering folk who,
unlike them are late risers and or night owls, for
whom the daylight hours are the least productive. A little
(27:04):
ritual of mine to cope with the time change is
to watch Night of the Living Dead whenever our clocks
spring forward, because appropriately enough, that's the day all the
horror begins. Holy smokes, I almost forgot. It's intermission time, folks,
(27:26):
and I'm your host, mister Edward October. Between the Acts
of October Pod, I'm going to share with you some
remembrances of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead,
and I'll attempt to explain to you why that zombie
classic is so special to me. And if you haven't
seen this picture, pause the podcast right now and return
(27:49):
after you've watched it. There's a handsome criterion, Blu Ray
and the damn things in the public domain, so you
have no excuse not to watch it. So pause it
right here, We'll wait and we're back. Wasn't that a
great picture? What do you mean you didn't watch it? Fine,
(28:13):
but let this be your warning. Here be spoilers, potentially.
Let's start with the day the time changes. Setting the
film on this day, for whatever reason, gives the picture
a mystique that's hard to pin down. It places Night
of the Living Dead in a twilight state, blurring the
lines between night and day, and signaling early on that
(28:36):
the world has changed. The status quo has been shattered,
whether Barbara and Johnny realize it or not, and the
world will soon be flipped on its axis. Indeed, this
picture was the product of perhaps the most turbulent period
of modern history, and as such, societal upheople is at
the very heart of Night of the Living Dead. Hell
(28:59):
George J. Ramirero was famously transporting the final print of
the film in his car when he heard over the
radio that Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated. The Vietnam War
was still churning out the corpses of young Americans like
so much raw beef through a meat grinder, while back home,
the civil rights movement was standing tall in the face
(29:20):
of grotesque acts of violence and social injustice back home.
And then there was Night of the Living Dead, a rough,
little black and white picture which resembled, through its documentarian
maison sance and nihilistic detachment, news footage of the war
in Vietnam or from race riots in the American South.
(29:41):
Romero cast Duyanne Jones, a black man as the hero
of the picture, a hero who meets an end that
looks for all the world like a lynching. I was
always sheltered from scary stuff by my parents, well at
least until I was about eleven or twelve. But Night
of the Living Dead was a special case. My dad
(30:01):
had taken my mom to see it when he was
in the Navy on the night before he shipped out
for six months or so in the South China Sea.
The film terrified my mother, who then had to fend
for herself all alone in an unfamiliar city while my
father was away on duty. She always referred to Night
of the Living Dead as the scariest picture ever made,
(30:24):
and warned me to steer clear of it, and I
did for a time. Imagine my delight when my cool
older cousin suggested we rent a VHS copy of it
and watch it one summer afternoon when we were hanging
out together. I rented the original version, but he was
(30:44):
expecting to watch the nineteen ninety remake, directed by Tom
Savini and starring the late Tony Todd in the role
originated by Dwayne Jones. I wasn't able to enjoy it
much because my cousin got bored watching this cheap, somewhat artsy,
black and white independent film that contained only a fraction
(31:04):
of the gore and grew he was expecting. I would
later revisit it on my own frequently after getting my
hands on the Good Times Home Video VHS release of it. This,
unfortunately was the colorized version. I had to take what
I could get, but that didn't blunt the picture's impact
on me. Night of the Living Dead still managed to
(31:28):
lure me into its gray world of overcast skies and
human lives reduced to kindling for a hungry.
Speaker 7 (31:37):
Fire quick sidebarb.
Speaker 12 (31:40):
You know.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Today, Night of the Living Dead is held up in
a place of honor. It's lauded as a grim masterpiece
with a clear political message, one that remains relevant even today.
Boy Howdy, it's in the Criterion collection, as I mentioned earlier,
but in the late eighties and nineties it was treated
as something of a joke, as something schlocky like Plan
(32:04):
nine from Outer Space or I was a teenage werewolf.
Every Halloween you could expect a beer commercial. I remember
one with Joe Piscopo to parody Romero's black and White Zombies.
It was even featured on an episode of Mad Movies
with the La Connection. That show ran in the late
eighties early nineties during Nickelodeon's Nicked Night programming block. They'd
(32:29):
edit an old public domain movie down to fit in
a thirty minute TV timeslot, and then replace the movie's
original dialogue with new dialogue written and performed by a
troop of not terribly funny improv comedians the La Connection,
though those guys were called the La Connection. Remember the
(32:50):
clip I played at the top of the intermission with
Barbara and Johnny pulling up to the graveyard and talking
about daylight savings time. Well, here's the Mad Movies version
of that same scene.
Speaker 12 (33:09):
Good thing we ran out of gas so close to
the house on Johnny, you bet well.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
The guests will be here soon.
Speaker 9 (33:16):
Look, Glory, We've had so many parties before no one
ever shows up, And I should dic I am any
different this time.
Speaker 12 (33:23):
I invited some people. Eh, you should have decorated.
Speaker 11 (33:26):
I'll look at this place.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
If that doesn't tell you all you need to know
about the condescending treatment Night of the Living Dead received
in the eighties and nineties, I don't know what does.
Perhaps the joky Return of the Living Dead spinoff series
was partly to blame, but in my mind, thanks to
my mother hyping it up, as she'd also done with
(33:52):
the Omen. Night of the Living Dead was always something
dangerous and subversive, a piece of curse to media, if
you will, and I loved it. As a latch key kid.
One of my favorite things to do whenever I was
alone in the house, especially if the skies were dark
with a storm brewing, was to put on a scary movie.
(34:14):
On these occasions, I'd often shove the dread inducing Night
of the Living Dead into the old VCR one afternoon,
I let myself in after school. I must have been
in seventh grade at the time. We lived right across
from my elementary school. Literally you could watch buses loading
and unloading kids from our front porch. My dad was
(34:38):
working a swing shift and my mom was going to
be home late, and already the black clowns were gathering.
They were so black that it looked like night even
though it wasn't quite supper time yet. What better time
to throw on this zombie classic. A thunderstorm came rolling
through and cousin it through hot every thunderclap was loud
(35:03):
enough to rattle the windows. It definitely added a terrifying
edge to what was already a creepy as hell horror picture.
At some point, I believe I turned off the TV
to watch the storm. I remember I was looking out
the window towards the elementary school when a blinding light
(35:25):
flooded the house and there was a thunderclap so loud
and window rattling that I nearly jumped out of my
skin with fright. The next day, I was at school
and casually chatting with a teacher about the monster storm
(35:48):
that had rolled through. I told her which house I
lived in and mentioned the huge thunderclap. Her eyes widened
and her jaw dropped. That was your house, she shrieked.
Apparently she'd stayed after school and was looking out the
window at the storm, just as I'd been looking out
the window towards the school, and she saw a bolt
(36:10):
of lightning strike our chimney, blowing flaming chunks of brick
all over the yard. Sure enough, we were finding brick
pieces in the yard for weeks after that. I think
my dad even ran over one with the lawnmower, and so.
Speaker 7 (36:27):
Pardon me a moment.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Yeah, yep, that's the that the end of our intermission,
I'm being told that the snack bar is about to
close up.
Speaker 7 (36:38):
If you need to.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Grab a snack or a refill on your drink, better
do so quickly, because Act two of October pod starts now.
Speaker 12 (36:54):
Granddad used to tell us ghost stories when we went
camping without fail. He'd scare here has kids so bad
that we wouldn't sleep a wink. He'd stoke up the
campfire and spin yarns about ghost trains and lost Indian tribes.
Tell us tales of phantom lovers searching the woods for
one another, tales of the bigfoot like creature who eats
all the catfish from the lake. But the story that
(37:17):
sticks with me most is the curse of Settler's Point.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
The Littlest Angel, from a true story submitted by ut
Cat Mom, narrated by Jen Co, host of our True
Crime podcast.
Speaker 12 (37:43):
In the seventeen eighties, several families Scotch Irish immigrants for
trappers mostly set down roots in the foothills outside the
trading posts that would one day become my hometown. They
had everything they needed to survive and prosper decades past.
Then around the turn of the century, they built Grace Chapel,
(38:04):
the first permanent church in Settler's Point. Now, this community
of farmers and trappers was too small to have its
own preacher, so for years they'd share preachers with small
churches and nearby communities. Settler's Point had a tendency to
draw fire and brimstone preachers, each one partial to Old
Testament wrath and New Testament revelation. Then in nineteen thirty eight,
(38:28):
during the Great Depression, Reverend Jubilee Trent was asked to
become the first permanent minister at Grace Chapel. It was
said that Reverend Trent's sermon were fiery and full of
bloody gore by all accounts, though his congregation loved it
so much they would have sopped it up with a biscuit.
But all that changed after a series of dalliances between
(38:50):
Reverend Trent and the daughter of a respected tobacco farmer.
The good Reverend put a baby in her belly, and
when the poor girl's father found out, he had Reverend
Trent beaten half to death and run out of town.
And according to Granddad's story, Reverend Trent put a curse
on the town as he left, My.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
God, this town will drown in blood before the solstice comes.
Speaker 12 (39:17):
That year brought with it a fulfillment of the reverend's
awful curse. The low temperatures that winner shattered records, and
it seemed the thaw would never come. Farmers had to
sow crops late into the growing season. What crops were
planted fell victim to a mysterious blight. Many families scraped
and starved that year, banks for closed on farms, and
(39:40):
people were left penniless after generations of prosperity. What's more,
a strain of flu burned its way through Settler's Point,
killing off half of the very young and most of
the very old. Old timers like Granddad claimed that the
townspeople went to church every Sunday and prayed for relief
from their misfortune. Whenever he told the story, Granddad would
(40:04):
say that even if God sent down the little est
angel to help him, it'd be a blessing. No such
blessing came a year later. A year later to the day,
a lumber mill worker who lived in a holler several
miles below Settler's Point saw two girls no older than
eleven or twelve. Stumbling down from the mountain. They were
(40:24):
wearing rags that were soaked from head to foot with blood.
They were hysterical and battled about demons. Demons who swarmed
the city and slaughtered everyone in sight. They left none alive.
It was a miracle these girls managed to escape the
demon's scrutiny. The man who found them obviously didn't believe
(40:45):
their story, but he called the sheriff. Anyway, the sheriff
and a handful of deputies made their way up the
lonely mountain road, and when they got to Settler's Point,
they found a massacre the likes of which they'd only
read about in westerns. Women and children lay slaughtered in
the unpaved streets. The ground was black and sticky with
(41:08):
blood and gore. A handful of men had been butchered
and lashed to trees and signposts. The FBI became involved
in the investigation, but quickly lost interest when no link
to any famous gangsters could be established. Still, they managed
to determine that all, or nearly all of those poor
(41:28):
people were killed with some sort of unidentifiable high caliber firearm,
a firearm powerful enough to obliterate human tissue into dust.
No one ever came to live there again. Properties were
foreclosed on, and the whole town was left in the
woods to deteriorate. In the decade since the massacre, the
(41:48):
woods have grown up around it, so much so that
you can hardly tell there was ever a town up there.
But according to Grandad, if you know where to look,
it's easy enough to find the curse ruins of Settler's Point.
Pretty neat story, huh, especially for around the campfire. I mean,
I've spent many restless nights under the stars haunted by
Granddad's tale. And like all good campfire stories, it has
(42:12):
a basis. In fact, there is a real Settler's Point,
a small town deserted after a real massacre. Now, I
don't know about a curse or about demons, but everything
else happened just as Granddad said. Me and my friends
in high school used to load up the car and
drive around looking for the abandoned mountain road that led
to the ghost town. We never found it, though we
(42:33):
spent many autumn nights trying. Back when I was doing
my master's coursework, I'm a social worker now, I wrote
a paper once on the sociological effects of violence and
small communities. I chose Settler's Point as my subject. Now,
I'm not going to bore you with all the historical
bits I dug up. However, I did find the exact
(42:54):
lopation of Settler's Points Ruins. During spring break of that year,
I traveled back home with my boyfriend and we set
aside a day to go backpacking up there. Oh, I
almost forgot to tell you something important. The campfire tell
that my granddad told us was that the preacher was
run out of town and he cursed the town that
he left. But according to my research, he was beaten
(43:17):
to death by an angry mob right there on the
steps of the church, possibly uttering the curses he laid dying.
This version of the event comes from an account published
in the county newspaper. A friend of mine in law
school comed through some of the vintage police records but
couldn't find any charges filed in relation to this murder. Okay,
(43:37):
where was I?
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Oh?
Speaker 12 (43:39):
Yeah, the ruins. Okay, So me and my boyfriend we
backpacked up to Settler's Point. It was much farther from
my hometown than I expected. In fact, it was about
sundown when we got all the way up there, and
the town was much smaller than I thought. I mean,
maybe a bunch of buildings had been raised, but what
we saw looked like nothing more than a tiny general
(44:01):
store in a church. I say church, but it really
was just a one room chapel. It was the only
building we stepped inside, because the building shared by the
general store and post office and the one home still
standing were in such bad shape we thought just by
stepping inside we might cause the whole thing to crumble.
The church was a much more solid structure. When we
(44:23):
found it. There was a young poplar growing straight up
through a hole in the roof. A carpet of weeds
and sticker bushes covered the warp, uneven timbers of the floor.
The stone walls looked all hairy with moss and ivy.
There was an eerie place. The whole time I was inside,
I couldn't stop thinking that a man was lynched on
the steps of this very building. After that, we explored
(44:46):
the surrounding area. In widening circles, We've had a handful
of deserted homes, monuments to abandoned lives. An eerie sense
of sadness hung about the whole place. We set up
our tents not far from the remnants of Settler's Point.
We weren't brave enough to actually camp inside the town.
(45:06):
It was a wild, restless night, for sure. I kept
dreaming that the ghost of Reverend Trent was lingering just
outside our campsite. If the wind blew, or a leaf
or a twig dropped on our tent, I imagined it
was his blood dripping into the rainfly. Well, now we
(45:36):
can fast forward to about a week and a half later.
I managed to track down the name of a woman
who lived in Settler's Point during the Depression. She was
way up in her nineties and was in hospice Karen Knoxville.
Her name was Eunice bomb Gardner, and she would have
been just a little, tiny girl at the time of massacre.
Now I know what you're thinking. Not many people would
(45:57):
have gone to such lengths for a master's project. And
I'm no private detective, but let's just say I knew
some people who could pull some strings. Anyway, I spoke
to Yunus's daughter and arranged to visit the old lady
at her bedside. We spoke for a long time between
her naps, she was fairly well sedated. A lot of
our little talk was about ut football and raising tomatoes,
(46:20):
so I won't bore you with the blow by blow
replay of our conversation. Well, with a little prodding from
her daughter, who's pretty much an old lady herself, Unus
told me a little bit about her time at Settler's Point.
Apparently more people survived it than the legend would imply.
She wasn't one of the blood spattered little girls who
came off the mountain, but Eunice said she did know
(46:42):
both of them from church. I asked her about Reverend Trent.
She said she really didn't remember him, and was of
course not there when he was beaten to death, but
she did say that she remembered seeing red stains on
the church step and asking her daddy about it. He
told her that this old hobo had come into town
and cleaned and gutted some trout right there on the
(47:02):
steps before someone ran them off. Una said she never
did believe this story. She became less lucid as her
mud started to kick in, but she repeatedly said that
things were bad in Settler's Point, with people just barely
scraping by. We prayed and prayed for a little angel
to come out and put an into all this struggle
in misery, she said. She also said that people were
(47:22):
praying to be cleansed of the sins that Reverend Trent
had infected the town with. Unice's doctor was planning on
visiting soon, so I kind of hastily asked about the massacre.
She became visibly pissed off when I asked her these questions,
but she answered them as best she could. She said
she was walking home from the dime store when the
strangers came into town. That's what she called them, strangers.
(47:48):
They were all beautiful, like movie stars, except they were
dressed awfully peculiar. Una said. She walked past one of
them and remembered thinking his eyes were black. How many
of them were there? Were they all men? I asked,
They were so beautiful, she said, looking at a point
(48:09):
somewhere on the ceiling. Then she looked back at me
with an expression on her face that was so crooked,
I thought she might be having a stroke. We lived
a good piece outside town, she said. I was half
way home before I heard the booming, gunshots booming and screaming, screamed,
just like the Lake of Fire. She said this as
(48:33):
she began to doze off again. I had to ask
her one last question while she was still awake, Eunice,
I asked, do you believe that those strangers were demons? Demons?
She replied, they weren't demons.
Speaker 6 (48:49):
Child.
Speaker 12 (48:50):
We prayed them there.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
Stick around after the credits for a brief word from
some of our fellow indie podcasters, creators, and friends. There
may even be some bloopers, outtakes, and bonus content as well.
You have been listening to to Octoberpod. Octoberpod is produced,
edited and directed by Edward October. The series co producers
are m J McAdams and Amber Jordan. Logo and banner
(50:11):
graphics by Jessica Good Edward October, character design by Nick Calavera.
Select still photography courtesy of unsplashed dot com. Select music
cues by Doctor dream Chip, and various other stock music
and sound effects courtesy of freesound dot Org. Music from
Bigfoot Apocalypse and Thorax theme from Octoberpod composed by Nico Vitesi.
(50:35):
All other images, music, and FX cues, except where noted,
are sourced from within the public domain. Follow us on
YouTube at Octoberpod home video on Instagram and the app
I still call Twitter at octoberpodvhs and on TikTok and
Blue Sky at Octoberpod. Or find us and all of
(50:56):
our links on the world wide web at octoberpodviach dot com.
For business inquiries or story submissions, email Octoberpod at gmail
dot com. If you enjoyed this program, we'd be very
pleased if you told your friends about us, And while
you're at it, ride us a five star or equivalent review.
(51:17):
Wherever you were listening, the man who spoke to you
was mister Edward October.
Speaker 3 (51:29):
Welcome to Colony seven dash too.
Speaker 13 (51:33):
How often do you get let into a moon colony?
Speaker 3 (51:35):
Will?
Speaker 13 (51:36):
This is history in the making.
Speaker 6 (51:39):
New vaccine supposed to protect you from the zombie virus.
Speaker 4 (51:42):
Just a precaution.
Speaker 14 (51:45):
The name's Hen.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
I'm one of the local radio hosts, and you have
been assigned as my co host.
Speaker 13 (51:52):
Oh my god, are you okay? You're not looking too good?
Speaker 2 (51:55):
Are you?
Speaker 14 (51:57):
Shit?
Speaker 3 (51:58):
Soone just turned.
Speaker 15 (52:00):
I Oh shit?
Speaker 7 (52:04):
What Will? What do you mean?
Speaker 8 (52:07):
Do you think this is a scratch or a bite?
Speaker 6 (52:13):
Hey, it's only three days you do you know?
Speaker 2 (52:18):
Either returns or doesn't As it was that.
Speaker 8 (52:22):
Listen to Apocalypse Radio wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 6 (52:27):
When you're alone in your house but you'd like to
feel like you're not, the podcast Inside your House can
keep you company. Our show will make sure that you
run up the stairs at night when you turn off
the lights and check under your bed before you sleep.
We'll fill your dreams and nightmares with bizarre birds, creepy crawlers,
and heroic hitmen. We'll have you pulling back the shower
(52:51):
curtain just in case inside, eyeing your closets as you
walk past them. We'll bring you everything from the classics
that you know and love to thee and often silly
world of creepy pastas. You even got some stories written
just for the show that you won't hear anywhere else.
So go check out the podcast inside your House. We're
(53:11):
on all major platforms, as well as inside your pantry,
your cross base, and sitting at the foot of your
bed at night watching you sleep.
Speaker 15 (53:20):
The full moon hangs high above the tree line and
serves as a spotlight on a woman approaching a dilapidated cabin.
Speaker 13 (53:30):
God, we need to oil that door.
Speaker 15 (53:32):
Hey girls, what are you up to?
Speaker 5 (53:34):
Nothing much?
Speaker 15 (53:35):
Just sat here in a creepy cabin. But first, I've
just got to tell you about the murderer. They're just
caught in town.
Speaker 13 (53:41):
Oh thank god they caught him. I was losing sleep,
and believe me, sleeping with a room full of ghosts
isn't an easy task at the best of times. Anyway, Becks,
what about this murderer? Then afterwards, I've got one hell
of a spooky story to tell you, guys.
Speaker 15 (53:54):
Oh, make myself comfortable then. Spine Chillers and serial Killers
is a bi weekly podcast where three friends, Tash, Begs
and Emma discuss one true crime case and one tale
of the paranormal. If you enjoy spooky, murdery stuff with
a good dose of laughter, random singing, and the odd
off topic wander, the list is the podcast for you.
(54:17):
You can find them anywhere you get podcasts. Strictly for
adult audiences only, said stay safe, don't kill people, and
keep it weird.
Speaker 1 (54:33):
All right, here we go, that bastard Daylight Savings Time,
A Memoir of the Living Dead. A Memoir of the
Living Dead, and October pot intermission program by every Doctor
bur Yes you'll hear plain noises, but I'm just not
going to give a fuck I think, oh, maybe maybe
(54:56):
I care about this one. See, the trick is not minding.
That's the trick to everything, is just not caring.
Speaker 12 (55:06):
Four. In the seventeen eighties, several families scotch Irish immigrants
for Trappler.
Speaker 16 (55:15):
Here comes the plane again, flying above my f in house.
Here comes the plane again. I wish it was quiet
as a mouse.
Speaker 1 (55:40):
Twenty four angel, we gotta find crop duster.
Speaker 7 (55:46):
Now there's a.
Speaker 1 (55:50):
Hovercraft coming over. And World War one biplane and a
crop duster, a couple of choppers, rusty chavette with no muffler.
Speaker 7 (56:06):
Are we good people? All right? Twenty four plane?
Speaker 17 (56:15):
The plane, it flies into my brain. I am gonna
go Insaney, yay, cause the then mo the fuckin plane
flying up in.
Speaker 2 (56:34):
My mother the fucking brain? Okay?
Speaker 12 (56:42):
Should I do that? As Grandpa's voice, I kind of
feel weird? Should I go? Even if God sent the
littlest angel to help him, it'd be a blessing.
Speaker 1 (56:51):
I don't always turn on the heat, but when I do,
I prefer to do it. When we are mid sentence
recording audio.
Speaker 12 (57:00):
He told her that this old hobo had come into
town and cleaned and gutted some trap. No, he told
her that he is old, so each of these.
Speaker 1 (57:08):
Is going to have a crash sting. I didn't highlight
them in red, so they don't exist, motherfucker.
Speaker 12 (57:14):
And the decade since the manager. Nope, not the manager.
It's a massacre, masshaker.
Speaker 1 (57:20):
The next day, I was at school and casually chatting.
The next day, I was at school and casually chatting.
Speaker 14 (57:27):
Gourd curvy, God give me, hey guy, it's plain time, man,
son of a gun.
Speaker 1 (57:38):
It's air tavving time.
Speaker 7 (57:39):
Baby.
Speaker 14 (57:41):
I'm gonna lose my.
Speaker 17 (57:42):
Fucking mind, baby, Bob, Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (57:48):
It's the Big Bopper.
Speaker 14 (57:50):
Is the ghost of the Big Bopper and his plain?
Speaker 1 (57:52):
Hello Berbersion till lazed up in your face, piece of
shit hanging down. Okay.
Speaker 12 (58:01):
She became less lucid as her mud started to kick in,
but she repeatedly said things that were bad and sellers. No,
but I'm gonna take a drink.
Speaker 15 (58:11):
I'm sorry, a little bird.
Speaker 7 (58:15):
Did you miss me? Did you miss me? I am
a plane of new insane and American noise up and.
Speaker 12 (58:26):
Here we set up our tents not far from the remnants. Nope, remnants,
that's not remnants. It's remnants. I wanted it to be longer.
Speaker 1 (58:35):
To shield his face from the rain drops which now
streamed down. No fuck, the rain was falling. The boy
held his hand up, held up his hand to shield
his face from the rain drops, which now to shield
(58:58):
himself from the rain drops which now stream down his
face deep.
Speaker 12 (59:13):
A carpet of weeds and sticker bushes covered the warp.
Uneven Timber, They shiver me, Timbers, I said that wrong music.
Speaker 1 (59:23):
Start playing that shitty ass mad movies theme as underscore.
Speaker 12 (59:27):
Saw two girls no older than eleven or trault.
Speaker 1 (59:33):
The excitement is palpable.
Speaker 7 (59:36):
The excitement is palpable.
Speaker 12 (59:38):
All right, you'll if you need, you'll have to. That's
all I got. If you want me to speed it up,
if you want me to try to do an accent,
just let me know. I don't know, I don't know,
but anyway, good script. I like it so different from
the littlest angel I know, Mademoiselle Christian based, yours is
about dam its. All right, heart, you could do this child,
(01:00:04):
we prayed them. There Does that sound good?
Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
B be afraid.
Speaker 8 (01:00:15):
And no.
Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
Want nat.
Speaker 18 (01:02:20):
Doing?
Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
Do you mean fund ray? Let you cont
I Edward October. The sound you hear is midnight in
a quiet American suburb. This is the start of October.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Pod.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
There's a god in the pool behind my house. At
least I thought it was a god.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
It arrived near the end of October, in the dead
of night, while the neighborhood slept, Harper was awakened by
the sound of something hitting the window, tossing off his covers.
He jumped to his feet and looked outside to a
world illuminated by starlight. There on the ground, a twitching
pile of jet black feathers lay writhing. Harper mistook the
(00:53):
thing for a crow or a raven at first, after all,
it wasn't the first time a bird had smashed in
to the window. Harper, still half asleep, thought about helping it.
And then it began to scream, a caw, a death rattle,
a prayer to eternity to end its misery. But as
(01:21):
seconds passed, the raspiness of its cry began to fade,
while the volume only grew. Its cadence changed to something
resembling the horn of a train. Getting closer. The grass
around the creature decayed to create the outline of a
perfect triangle, and Harper became fixated on its eyes and
(01:42):
how they reflected the light from the moon. One could
hear flesh and feathers starting to tear open along the
pitiable beast's back. The sky provided just enough clarity to
make out what Harper would come to wish he'd never seen.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Hands, several of them, each digit on each hand, writhing
and wriggling like a tadpole that had found itself on land.
After a few moments of struggle, the hand touched earth
and began to drag themselves, the feathered carcass and Harper's
(02:23):
horrified attention toward the decrepit swimming pool. Its fingers now
moved in a rhythmic pattern more commonly associated with the
feet of a millipede. The joints made a wet, crackling sound,
while the hole from where the hands had been berthed
sputtered some.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Dark, heavy liquid. The creature made its way under the
fence surrounding the abandoned above ground pool. It stopped at
the edge of the pool and positioned its hands in
a circle below its torn feathered body pushed it upward.
Long sickly arms with joints revealed themselves. As the body
(03:04):
continued its ascent higher into the evening air, it pushed
its body up just enough to flop into the pool,
and Harper lost sight of it.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Don't ask me why, because I don't know myself. But
I went after it. I put on a jacket and
socks and shoes, no hesitation. I brought a flashlight, but
I didn't really need it. The moon and stars were
bright that night, and I went to get a closer look.
I should have been scared, but I felt safe, more
(03:46):
safe than I'd felt perhaps ever before in my life.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Harper didn't go out to the pool much. No one did.
It had come with the house in dire need of repair,
but at the bottom of a long list of other
things that needed urgent fixing, the pool was always considered
a problem for another time. Just a few steps into
the yard and Harper was chilled down to his very marrow.
But when he peered over the edge of the water,
(04:13):
he felt warmer just looking at the thing. Its bony
arms were hidden away once again, and it crawled around
on the surface.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
I could get a better look at its wings now.
They were huge but.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Shattered, so it used its many hands to move it
wasn't cold enough for ice, but Harper had to touch
the surface to fully understand what he was seeing. The
pool was still liquid, putrid, stagnant water, but the celestial
creature before him crawled on the surface as if it
were solid. Harper said, hello.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
To it, I was trying to break the ice.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Get it.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
The creature, unsurprised by Harper's presence, didn't stop what it
was doing. When it finally spoke, it used the boy's
own voice.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
Hello, be not afraid.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
You sound just like me.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
That must have been scary, unnerving any of those things.
Speaker 6 (05:08):
Right, No, it was exciting.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
I asked it what it was doing.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
No, the first question Harper asked was why are you
walking on the water? But then Harper asked what really
should have been the first question, what are you?
Speaker 3 (05:25):
By then, my eyes had adjusted more to the night,
and I was able to see the thing more clearly.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yes, it had the head of a bird, but it
looked more like an eagle than a raven. Its eyes
reflected the moon like the eyes of a cat. Its
body was long and snakelike to accommodate its many hands,
and the viscous liquid that had been leaking out where
the arms popped out had finally slowed to a trickle.
(05:55):
It was like the creature was wearing the carcase of
a bird as a disguise.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
I'm an angel, he said.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
I decided that it was a he because he sounded
like me.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Of course, real angels are neither male nor female, but.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
I didn't know that. I'm just a kid.
Speaker 7 (06:16):
Angel.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Oh Written especially for October pod by Annie Morgan, co
creator of the podcast Inside Your House, from an original
idea by Madeline Zeitsoff, narrated by Edward October and starring
(06:40):
Arthur Williams, co host of Family Plot podcast as Harper.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Anyway, finding out what he was didn't surprise me at all.
I felt just so safe around him, so drawn to him.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
That's why Harper told the angel he'd help him however
he could. And then the angel told Harper to help
him hide. He said he was trying to catch a
frog or a tadpole. And then he finally opened his eyes.
All of them they dotted his entire body, some large
(07:19):
and bulging, some little more than pinpricks, some partially obscured
behind feathers, but all of them glowing and flashing the
most awful colors.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
I'm running out of time, so hurry quickly go into
your house, grab something sharp, whatever is closest, and meet
me back out here, he.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Said, And so Harper came back out with a kitchen
knife in hand.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
This lovely, bright, beautiful creature needed my help, and I
wanted to help it, no matter what.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Such an accommodating child.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
I need you to cut yourself, not deep, just enough
to spill some blood in the water without hesitation.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
The boy sliced his hand, because that's what they do
in the movies for things like this, important things, blood,
oaths and the like. Harper watched the red liquid, which
looked black under the night sky, chip chip into the water.
It was instantaneous. The angels sank, and only just in
(08:25):
time too. The second he was completely submerged, sirens cried
out in the distance. It was a sound similar to
the screech the angel had made when he first fell
into the yard.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Only this time I felt afraid.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Harper hid next to the dented plastic pool side and
didn't dare to speak or even breathe. Something was coming.
Had it not been the middle of the night, and
had it not been coming from the wrong direction, he
would have thought it was the sun. All he saw
was fire. He closed his eyes, praying for it to pass.
(09:12):
Surely helping the angel would amplify his prayers. Something flew
above him, but it was so bright it hurt his
eyes even with them closed.
Speaker 7 (09:23):
There was a.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Rhythmic wind, something huge flapping above the house, something that
must have been the size of an aeroplane. The noise
it made was deafening. It was what Harper imagined the
trumpets at the end of the world would sound like,
like a tornado siren that taps directly into your worst
(09:43):
fears and pulls them out. If the earth were to
end in a nuclear apocalypse, then this might be the
sound that would signal the bombs. This was the sound
of the end times. Then it was gone. Harper didn't
(10:07):
open his eyes for a long time. A long time.
It felt like an eternity. He was afraid he'd wake
up in a void. But when he finally did, he
was still in the yard, still up against the lip
of the pool. He stood to check on his new
friend and saw the water steaming. But there at the
(10:32):
bottom was the Angel.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
I began to think of him as mine then, because
I'd save him and I warranted him to save me.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
He rose up from the bottom. The black gore around
his hands washed off into the pool, mixing with Harper's
blood and the blood of a few frogs that now
floated dead on the surface.
Speaker 5 (11:00):
Thank you, child, you've done something miraculous today. Now go
back to sleep.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
The next day, all of the frogs and tadpoles were
gone from the pool, and the water looked clearer, though
lit by the sunrise, it was blood red. Harper saw
his angel in delight for the first time then, and
he asked the boy if he could help him accomplish
his mission. But now his voice had a gravelier, almost
(11:28):
plemy quality. It sounded like Harper whenever he was sick.
The phrase frog in the throat comes to mind.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
And it had made me wonder where they had all gone,
the frogs. I mean?
Speaker 1 (11:42):
To that question, the angel simply explained that on Earth,
angels have to eat something that he'd need Harper's help doing.
As the sun rose higher, Harper could see that his
new friend's wounds had healed, and his arms now slid
efforts from the holes in his feathered hide, extending and
(12:03):
retracting as he used them to swim. His extra eyes,
which he kept secret, were closed most of the time.
His feathers were dark brown in the daylight, with bits
of gold sprinkled throughout, and his face was now hawk like.
He instructed the boy in a voice that now sounded
(12:25):
more like sick than like Harper, and told him to
catch him some flies to eat to day, so that
he could try and heal his wings. Harper made honey
traps with coffee cups and scattered them out on the
seldom used part of the lawn. But being so late
in the year, he worried that the bugs might not
be biting, but his angel assured him that there was
(12:48):
a heat wave coming and the bugs would be all right.
The angel was soon proven right. Coming up out of
the grass were dozens of flies buzzing around These little
traps accumulated countless flies, mosquitoes, gnats, and other assorted creepy crawleys,
which Harper dumped into the water, washing the writhing masses
(13:11):
into the pool. The water had stayed red, but not
as bold or red as it had been in the sun.
Harper marveled at the fact that angels could bleed too.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
There was something so satisfying about knowing my blood was
mixing with his, like I would become holier by association.
I wanted to ask my angel if he'd help me
because I helped him, you know, help me be forgiven
for my sins.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
And so Harper asked the angel that very thing. The
angel assured the boy that he'd give the Master his
highest recommendation on all matters of sin and forgiveness. Then
he released the boy from his service for the remainder of.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
The day, knowing that he was well fed and healing.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
It was a golden afternoon that day, and had the
trees not already shed their leaves, one would have sworn
it was summer. But there was death in the air.
Harper could smell it the second he stepped outside. Then
death's presence was confirmed by the hushed and anguished conversations
coming from next door. Harper peered over the fence and
(14:26):
saw his neighbors. The entire family huddled around the chicken coop.
The kids were distraught, the adults mad. The boy yelled
over the fence to see if everyone was okay, only
to find out that something had gotten into the neighbor's
chicken coop. They'd had six chickens all were now dead.
(14:47):
Harper went to the edge of the property, trying to
get a look at the chickens. What he saw was
covered in flies. Still, it was gruesome enough to make
him feel ill. The next time he saw the angel,
it was the first thing he spoke of.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Our property was big enough that I didn't have to
worry about my neighbors overhearing me, even in the daylight.
Also big enough that we didn't have to smell that
chicken coop very often. Anyway, I talked to my angel
about it as he swam laps in the pool.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
The angel was now able to swim while holding his
wings up out of the water. Harper told the angel
about the flies, told him that there were so many
flies on the chickens it looked almost as if the
flies had slaughtered them.
Speaker 8 (15:33):
No child did something much worse.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
I'm afraid he now sounded nothing like Harper, which made
the boy sad.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
He must be using his real voice.
Speaker 9 (15:45):
Now doesn't have a plague coming. But I can't do
anything about that. I just need you to bring me eggs.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
And Harper did as he was told. He snuck into
the chicken coop as soon as it got dark and
grabbed as many as he could find. The dead chickens
had been moved, but there were still piles of flies
feasting on the blood and gore left behind.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
I got out as fast as I could. Looking at
it still made me feel sick.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
When Harper dumped the eggs in the pool, he figured
that the angel was probably going to eat them, so
he decided not to stick around.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
The idea of an angel having to eat food the
same way we do made me feel strange.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Yes, eating does seem like a vulgar act, an act
somehow beneath the likes of an angel. Harper had never
felt so sick as he did. The next morning, he
had red spots all over his body, and as the
day wore on, they opened up into bloody sores. He
waited until his parents left for work, then he went
(16:55):
to the pool. The boy's throat was so raw he
could hardly speak, but without even croaking out the words
help me, the angel said, my.
Speaker 5 (17:06):
Child, Of course, of course I will help.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Harper wanted to ask the angel if he could heal him,
and as if he'd heard the boy's thoughts, the angel said.
Speaker 8 (17:19):
I can do better and heal you. I can baptize you.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
The angel led Harper to the pool. The boy dragged
himself up the ladder, using the very last of his strength,
and then splashed in. The angel caught Harper with his long,
long arms dotted with glowing, madly staring eyes, some slitted
(17:51):
like the eyes of a cat, and held the boy close.
Speaker 8 (17:56):
Think of all your si, he said, so.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
I thought of cheating off Becky Rogers in my math class.
I thought of stealing a bunch of red bulls from
seven to eleven. But worst of all, I thought of
my little sister Elizabeth. I thought about babysitting her. I
thought about letting her go to her friend Sarah's house
across the street. Mom and Dad let her do that.
All the time, I thought about how I should have
(18:27):
walked her there, I held her hand maybe. I thought
of how if I'd just stayed with her long enough,
I could have seen the car coming. I thought of
being forgiven, forgiven by my parents first of all, and
then being forgiven by Jesus. I thought of all the
(18:52):
bad thoughts I'd had because of the things they'd said
to me. I thought about getting into heaven now, when
I'd been planning on ending up in hell for so long.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
The angel lowered the boy down. The water was warm
and smelled of copper. It splashed away all of Harper's
sores and healed his skin, and when he pulled the
boy out, he was like brand new. The next day,
(19:35):
Harper went over to his pool, but before he did,
his mother told him to be careful in the yard.
It was the first time she'd spoken to him in
quite a while. The boy was happy. There was a
storm brewing, and Harper worried about the angel being alone
in the cold, but the angel said he only needed
(19:56):
one last thing from him and he'd be all healed up.
He said he needed to be set free. He said
he couldn't leave the pool without Harper's permission. Well, Harper
rushed to the shed to get an axe er well
a nice sturdy hatchet. They still had hours of daylight left,
but the storm clouds were so intense it looked like
(20:17):
twilight was approaching. Without hesitation, he chopped the side of
the pool. Water rushed out, and the boy hurried to
demolish one side utterly.
Speaker 5 (20:29):
It felt good to destroy something.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
The angel slipped through the hole in the pool with
the gushing water and shook himself off. Water flooded the
yard then, and Harper's parents began yelling something from inside
the house. The wind stole their words. The first splashes
of rain started. The angel stood to his glorious full height,
(20:57):
and for the first time hard first saw his wings unfurl.
There were six, though they weren't broken anymore. The feathers
were falling off. The angel flapped his wings, shaking off
the remaining feathers like a November wind, stripping naked the
bowels of their most stubborn autumn leaves. The boy's parents
(21:21):
were running outside now as the sky darkened, yelling at
Harper to get away, but the boy only yelled back.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Don't worry, He's an angel.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
The feathers were now fully gone, exposing leathery bat like
wings beneath. Harper hoped his angel was okay. His face
was changing now too, the eyes on either side of
his nose growing farther apart and burning like coals of fire,
(21:53):
with new ones sprouting up all over his strange body.
The rain was falling fast, are now faster, and the
boy held up his hand to shield himself from the
rain drops, which streamed down his face and were.
Speaker 7 (22:08):
Deep red blood.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
It was raining blood. Harper fell to his knees in
total shock as drops of crimson fell from the sky
and colored the world with its awful stain.
Speaker 5 (22:26):
Thank you for helping me change good word.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
The angel, tall and magnificent yet terrible as heartache, stepped
between Harper and his parents. Someone began screaming next door,
and then all at once, the screams could be heard everywhere.
Harper looked up, his eyes stinging from the hot rain
of blood, and saw through a gap in the clouds
(22:53):
that the moon was out around at the stars. It
was three p m. Easter in daylight time. Harper's angel
is a beast, whatever it was now stepped up to
Harper's parents and spoke, using all the voices of the damned.
(23:41):
Monsters do have their place in the zoo, in your nightmares,
in the deep, in your favorite horror movies, but not
on your phone during an ad break, Politically motivated interests
are seeking to influence you through the ads placed on
this podcast. Hi, I'm your host Edward October, reminding you
(24:04):
that we have very limited control over the ads you
hear on October Pod. Please remember that only the ads
and promos I read with my own voice, carry the
endorsement of Edward October and October Pod. Furthermore, I and
the makers of October Pod repudiate any entity advertised which
(24:25):
seeks to promote hatred, anti American or anti democratic sentiments,
or the spread of misinformation. Now with that in mind,
October Pod will return after this brief ad break.
Speaker 8 (24:41):
Somewhere the sun shines, Somewhere the birds sing the glory
of a new dawn. Somewhere it's spring again. But here,
here it's always Halloween. It's the Rogue Transmissions Halfway to Halloween.
Speaker 10 (24:59):
Hullaballoop, Rogue Transmissions and Unhinged Anthology of Indie Podcasts is
invading your streaming device to throw a.
Speaker 8 (25:11):
Hell raising halfway to Halloween party.
Speaker 11 (25:16):
Featuring all of your indie podcasting favorites, including Rue Crime,
chick Lid, October pod Our, True Crime Podcast, Pitney and
Amelia's Bitch and Boutique, Spine Chillers and Serial Killers, Serial Knapper,
Twisted and Uncourked, and Witch's Talking Tarot. It's coming Tuesday,
(25:40):
April twenty ninth to this podcast. That's right, The Rogue
Transmissions Halfway to Halloween Hullabaloo is coming to the podcast
you're listening to right now on Tuesday, April twenty ninth,
twenty twenty five. Rogue Transmissions. Rogue Transmissions. Rogue Transmissions have
(26:01):
way to Halloween, Hello Aloon. List of participating podcasts may
vary to the external yourself enjoy. Rogue Transmissions responsible for prohibiting.
Speaker 12 (26:11):
Day ought to make the day to time changes the
first day of summer.
Speaker 13 (26:14):
What, well, it's eight o'clock and it's still light.
Speaker 5 (26:18):
A lot of good the extra daylight does us.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
That bastard daylight savings time. When you hear this, the
shittification and the damnable blight on our existence that is
DST will have been in effect for most of the
US of A for just about a month. I hate
this pushing forward of the clock's hands for so many reasons,
but mostly because no one knows what it's for, and
(26:42):
it seems increasingly like some bullshit concocted by early to bed,
early to rise. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps if
you arrive on time, you're late type A personality motherfiers
to enslave the rest of us long suffering folk who,
unlike them are late risers and or night owls, for
whom the daylight hours are the least productive. A little
(27:04):
ritual of mine to cope with the time change is
to watch Night of the Living Dead whenever our clocks
spring forward, because appropriately enough, that's the day all the
horror begins. Holy smokes, I almost forgot. It's intermission time, folks,
(27:26):
and I'm your host, mister Edward October. Between the Acts
of October Pod, I'm going to share with you some
remembrances of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead,
and I'll attempt to explain to you why that zombie
classic is so special to me. And if you haven't
seen this picture, pause the podcast right now and return
(27:49):
after you've watched it. There's a handsome criterion, Blu Ray
and the damn things in the public domain, so you
have no excuse not to watch it. So pause it
right here, We'll wait and we're back. Wasn't that a
great picture? What do you mean you didn't watch it? Fine,
(28:13):
but let this be your warning. Here be spoilers, potentially.
Let's start with the day the time changes. Setting the
film on this day, for whatever reason, gives the picture
a mystique that's hard to pin down. It places Night
of the Living Dead in a twilight state, blurring the
lines between night and day, and signaling early on that
(28:36):
the world has changed. The status quo has been shattered,
whether Barbara and Johnny realize it or not, and the
world will soon be flipped on its axis. Indeed, this
picture was the product of perhaps the most turbulent period
of modern history, and as such, societal upheople is at
the very heart of Night of the Living Dead. Hell
(28:59):
George J. Ramirero was famously transporting the final print of
the film in his car when he heard over the
radio that Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated. The Vietnam War
was still churning out the corpses of young Americans like
so much raw beef through a meat grinder, while back home,
the civil rights movement was standing tall in the face
(29:20):
of grotesque acts of violence and social injustice back home.
And then there was Night of the Living Dead, a rough,
little black and white picture which resembled, through its documentarian
maison sance and nihilistic detachment, news footage of the war
in Vietnam or from race riots in the American South.
(29:41):
Romero cast Duyanne Jones, a black man as the hero
of the picture, a hero who meets an end that
looks for all the world like a lynching. I was
always sheltered from scary stuff by my parents, well at
least until I was about eleven or twelve. But Night
of the Living Dead was a special case. My dad
(30:01):
had taken my mom to see it when he was
in the Navy on the night before he shipped out
for six months or so in the South China Sea.
The film terrified my mother, who then had to fend
for herself all alone in an unfamiliar city while my
father was away on duty. She always referred to Night
of the Living Dead as the scariest picture ever made,
(30:24):
and warned me to steer clear of it, and I
did for a time. Imagine my delight when my cool
older cousin suggested we rent a VHS copy of it
and watch it one summer afternoon when we were hanging
out together. I rented the original version, but he was
(30:44):
expecting to watch the nineteen ninety remake, directed by Tom
Savini and starring the late Tony Todd in the role
originated by Dwayne Jones. I wasn't able to enjoy it
much because my cousin got bored watching this cheap, somewhat artsy,
black and white independent film that contained only a fraction
(31:04):
of the gore and grew he was expecting. I would
later revisit it on my own frequently after getting my
hands on the Good Times Home Video VHS release of it. This,
unfortunately was the colorized version. I had to take what
I could get, but that didn't blunt the picture's impact
on me. Night of the Living Dead still managed to
(31:28):
lure me into its gray world of overcast skies and
human lives reduced to kindling for a hungry.
Speaker 7 (31:37):
Fire quick sidebarb.
Speaker 12 (31:40):
You know.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Today, Night of the Living Dead is held up in
a place of honor. It's lauded as a grim masterpiece
with a clear political message, one that remains relevant even today.
Boy Howdy, it's in the Criterion collection, as I mentioned earlier,
but in the late eighties and nineties it was treated
as something of a joke, as something schlocky like Plan
(32:04):
nine from Outer Space or I was a teenage werewolf.
Every Halloween you could expect a beer commercial. I remember
one with Joe Piscopo to parody Romero's black and White Zombies.
It was even featured on an episode of Mad Movies
with the La Connection. That show ran in the late
eighties early nineties during Nickelodeon's Nicked Night programming block. They'd
(32:29):
edit an old public domain movie down to fit in
a thirty minute TV timeslot, and then replace the movie's
original dialogue with new dialogue written and performed by a
troop of not terribly funny improv comedians the La Connection,
though those guys were called the La Connection. Remember the
(32:50):
clip I played at the top of the intermission with
Barbara and Johnny pulling up to the graveyard and talking
about daylight savings time. Well, here's the Mad Movies version
of that same scene.
Speaker 12 (33:09):
Good thing we ran out of gas so close to
the house on Johnny, you bet well.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
The guests will be here soon.
Speaker 9 (33:16):
Look, Glory, We've had so many parties before no one
ever shows up, And I should dic I am any
different this time.
Speaker 12 (33:23):
I invited some people. Eh, you should have decorated.
Speaker 11 (33:26):
I'll look at this place.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
If that doesn't tell you all you need to know
about the condescending treatment Night of the Living Dead received
in the eighties and nineties, I don't know what does.
Perhaps the joky Return of the Living Dead spinoff series
was partly to blame, but in my mind, thanks to
my mother hyping it up, as she'd also done with
(33:52):
the Omen. Night of the Living Dead was always something
dangerous and subversive, a piece of curse to media, if
you will, and I loved it. As a latch key kid.
One of my favorite things to do whenever I was
alone in the house, especially if the skies were dark
with a storm brewing, was to put on a scary movie.
(34:14):
On these occasions, I'd often shove the dread inducing Night
of the Living Dead into the old VCR one afternoon,
I let myself in after school. I must have been
in seventh grade at the time. We lived right across
from my elementary school. Literally you could watch buses loading
and unloading kids from our front porch. My dad was
(34:38):
working a swing shift and my mom was going to
be home late, and already the black clowns were gathering.
They were so black that it looked like night even
though it wasn't quite supper time yet. What better time
to throw on this zombie classic. A thunderstorm came rolling
through and cousin it through hot every thunderclap was loud
(35:03):
enough to rattle the windows. It definitely added a terrifying
edge to what was already a creepy as hell horror picture.
At some point, I believe I turned off the TV
to watch the storm. I remember I was looking out
the window towards the elementary school when a blinding light
(35:25):
flooded the house and there was a thunderclap so loud
and window rattling that I nearly jumped out of my
skin with fright. The next day, I was at school
and casually chatting with a teacher about the monster storm
(35:48):
that had rolled through. I told her which house I
lived in and mentioned the huge thunderclap. Her eyes widened
and her jaw dropped. That was your house, she shrieked.
Apparently she'd stayed after school and was looking out the
window at the storm, just as I'd been looking out
the window towards the school, and she saw a bolt
(36:10):
of lightning strike our chimney, blowing flaming chunks of brick
all over the yard. Sure enough, we were finding brick
pieces in the yard for weeks after that. I think
my dad even ran over one with the lawnmower, and so.
Speaker 7 (36:27):
Pardon me a moment.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Yeah, yep, that's the that the end of our intermission,
I'm being told that the snack bar is about to
close up.
Speaker 7 (36:38):
If you need to.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Grab a snack or a refill on your drink, better
do so quickly, because Act two of October pod starts now.
Speaker 12 (36:54):
Granddad used to tell us ghost stories when we went
camping without fail. He'd scare here has kids so bad
that we wouldn't sleep a wink. He'd stoke up the
campfire and spin yarns about ghost trains and lost Indian tribes.
Tell us tales of phantom lovers searching the woods for
one another, tales of the bigfoot like creature who eats
all the catfish from the lake. But the story that
(37:17):
sticks with me most is the curse of Settler's Point.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
The Littlest Angel, from a true story submitted by ut
Cat Mom, narrated by Jen Co, host of our True
Crime podcast.
Speaker 12 (37:43):
In the seventeen eighties, several families Scotch Irish immigrants for
trappers mostly set down roots in the foothills outside the
trading posts that would one day become my hometown. They
had everything they needed to survive and prosper decades past.
Then around the turn of the century, they built Grace Chapel,
(38:04):
the first permanent church in Settler's Point. Now, this community
of farmers and trappers was too small to have its
own preacher, so for years they'd share preachers with small
churches and nearby communities. Settler's Point had a tendency to
draw fire and brimstone preachers, each one partial to Old
Testament wrath and New Testament revelation. Then in nineteen thirty eight,
(38:28):
during the Great Depression, Reverend Jubilee Trent was asked to
become the first permanent minister at Grace Chapel. It was
said that Reverend Trent's sermon were fiery and full of
bloody gore by all accounts, though his congregation loved it
so much they would have sopped it up with a biscuit.
But all that changed after a series of dalliances between
(38:50):
Reverend Trent and the daughter of a respected tobacco farmer.
The good Reverend put a baby in her belly, and
when the poor girl's father found out, he had Reverend
Trent beaten half to death and run out of town.
And according to Granddad's story, Reverend Trent put a curse
on the town as he left, My.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
God, this town will drown in blood before the solstice comes.
Speaker 12 (39:17):
That year brought with it a fulfillment of the reverend's
awful curse. The low temperatures that winner shattered records, and
it seemed the thaw would never come. Farmers had to
sow crops late into the growing season. What crops were
planted fell victim to a mysterious blight. Many families scraped
and starved that year, banks for closed on farms, and
(39:40):
people were left penniless after generations of prosperity. What's more,
a strain of flu burned its way through Settler's Point,
killing off half of the very young and most of
the very old. Old timers like Granddad claimed that the
townspeople went to church every Sunday and prayed for relief
from their misfortune. Whenever he told the story, Granddad would
(40:04):
say that even if God sent down the little est
angel to help him, it'd be a blessing. No such
blessing came a year later. A year later to the day,
a lumber mill worker who lived in a holler several
miles below Settler's Point saw two girls no older than
eleven or twelve. Stumbling down from the mountain. They were
(40:24):
wearing rags that were soaked from head to foot with blood.
They were hysterical and battled about demons. Demons who swarmed
the city and slaughtered everyone in sight. They left none alive.
It was a miracle these girls managed to escape the
demon's scrutiny. The man who found them obviously didn't believe
(40:45):
their story, but he called the sheriff. Anyway, the sheriff
and a handful of deputies made their way up the
lonely mountain road, and when they got to Settler's Point,
they found a massacre the likes of which they'd only
read about in westerns. Women and children lay slaughtered in
the unpaved streets. The ground was black and sticky with
(41:08):
blood and gore. A handful of men had been butchered
and lashed to trees and signposts. The FBI became involved
in the investigation, but quickly lost interest when no link
to any famous gangsters could be established. Still, they managed
to determine that all, or nearly all of those poor
(41:28):
people were killed with some sort of unidentifiable high caliber firearm,
a firearm powerful enough to obliterate human tissue into dust.
No one ever came to live there again. Properties were
foreclosed on, and the whole town was left in the
woods to deteriorate. In the decade since the massacre, the
(41:48):
woods have grown up around it, so much so that
you can hardly tell there was ever a town up there.
But according to Grandad, if you know where to look,
it's easy enough to find the curse ruins of Settler's Point.
Pretty neat story, huh, especially for around the campfire. I mean,
I've spent many restless nights under the stars haunted by
Granddad's tale. And like all good campfire stories, it has
(42:12):
a basis. In fact, there is a real Settler's Point,
a small town deserted after a real massacre. Now, I
don't know about a curse or about demons, but everything
else happened just as Granddad said. Me and my friends
in high school used to load up the car and
drive around looking for the abandoned mountain road that led
to the ghost town. We never found it, though we
(42:33):
spent many autumn nights trying. Back when I was doing
my master's coursework, I'm a social worker now, I wrote
a paper once on the sociological effects of violence and
small communities. I chose Settler's Point as my subject. Now,
I'm not going to bore you with all the historical
bits I dug up. However, I did find the exact
(42:54):
lopation of Settler's Points Ruins. During spring break of that year,
I traveled back home with my boyfriend and we set
aside a day to go backpacking up there. Oh, I
almost forgot to tell you something important. The campfire tell
that my granddad told us was that the preacher was
run out of town and he cursed the town that
he left. But according to my research, he was beaten
(43:17):
to death by an angry mob right there on the
steps of the church, possibly uttering the curses he laid dying.
This version of the event comes from an account published
in the county newspaper. A friend of mine in law
school comed through some of the vintage police records but
couldn't find any charges filed in relation to this murder. Okay,
(43:37):
where was I?
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Oh?
Speaker 12 (43:39):
Yeah, the ruins. Okay, So me and my boyfriend we
backpacked up to Settler's Point. It was much farther from
my hometown than I expected. In fact, it was about
sundown when we got all the way up there, and
the town was much smaller than I thought. I mean,
maybe a bunch of buildings had been raised, but what
we saw looked like nothing more than a tiny general
(44:01):
store in a church. I say church, but it really
was just a one room chapel. It was the only
building we stepped inside, because the building shared by the
general store and post office and the one home still
standing were in such bad shape we thought just by
stepping inside we might cause the whole thing to crumble.
The church was a much more solid structure. When we
(44:23):
found it. There was a young poplar growing straight up
through a hole in the roof. A carpet of weeds
and sticker bushes covered the warp, uneven timbers of the floor.
The stone walls looked all hairy with moss and ivy.
There was an eerie place. The whole time I was inside,
I couldn't stop thinking that a man was lynched on
the steps of this very building. After that, we explored
(44:46):
the surrounding area. In widening circles, We've had a handful
of deserted homes, monuments to abandoned lives. An eerie sense
of sadness hung about the whole place. We set up
our tents not far from the remnants of Settler's Point.
We weren't brave enough to actually camp inside the town.
(45:06):
It was a wild, restless night, for sure. I kept
dreaming that the ghost of Reverend Trent was lingering just
outside our campsite. If the wind blew, or a leaf
or a twig dropped on our tent, I imagined it
was his blood dripping into the rainfly. Well, now we
(45:36):
can fast forward to about a week and a half later.
I managed to track down the name of a woman
who lived in Settler's Point during the Depression. She was
way up in her nineties and was in hospice Karen Knoxville.
Her name was Eunice bomb Gardner, and she would have
been just a little, tiny girl at the time of massacre.
Now I know what you're thinking. Not many people would
(45:57):
have gone to such lengths for a master's project. And
I'm no private detective, but let's just say I knew
some people who could pull some strings. Anyway, I spoke
to Yunus's daughter and arranged to visit the old lady
at her bedside. We spoke for a long time between
her naps, she was fairly well sedated. A lot of
our little talk was about ut football and raising tomatoes,
(46:20):
so I won't bore you with the blow by blow
replay of our conversation. Well, with a little prodding from
her daughter, who's pretty much an old lady herself, Unus
told me a little bit about her time at Settler's Point.
Apparently more people survived it than the legend would imply.
She wasn't one of the blood spattered little girls who
came off the mountain, but Eunice said she did know
(46:42):
both of them from church. I asked her about Reverend Trent.
She said she really didn't remember him, and was of
course not there when he was beaten to death, but
she did say that she remembered seeing red stains on
the church step and asking her daddy about it. He
told her that this old hobo had come into town
and cleaned and gutted some trout right there on the
(47:02):
steps before someone ran them off. Una said she never
did believe this story. She became less lucid as her
mud started to kick in, but she repeatedly said that
things were bad in Settler's Point, with people just barely
scraping by. We prayed and prayed for a little angel
to come out and put an into all this struggle
in misery, she said. She also said that people were
(47:22):
praying to be cleansed of the sins that Reverend Trent
had infected the town with. Unice's doctor was planning on
visiting soon, so I kind of hastily asked about the massacre.
She became visibly pissed off when I asked her these questions,
but she answered them as best she could. She said
she was walking home from the dime store when the
strangers came into town. That's what she called them, strangers.
(47:48):
They were all beautiful, like movie stars, except they were
dressed awfully peculiar. Una said. She walked past one of
them and remembered thinking his eyes were black. How many
of them were there? Were they all men? I asked,
They were so beautiful, she said, looking at a point
(48:09):
somewhere on the ceiling. Then she looked back at me
with an expression on her face that was so crooked,
I thought she might be having a stroke. We lived
a good piece outside town, she said. I was half
way home before I heard the booming, gunshots booming and screaming, screamed,
just like the Lake of Fire. She said this as
(48:33):
she began to doze off again. I had to ask
her one last question while she was still awake, Eunice,
I asked, do you believe that those strangers were demons? Demons?
She replied, they weren't demons.
Speaker 6 (48:49):
Child.
Speaker 12 (48:50):
We prayed them there.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
Stick around after the credits for a brief word from
some of our fellow indie podcasters, creators, and friends. There
may even be some bloopers, outtakes, and bonus content as well.
You have been listening to to Octoberpod. Octoberpod is produced,
edited and directed by Edward October. The series co producers
are m J McAdams and Amber Jordan. Logo and banner
(50:11):
graphics by Jessica Good Edward October, character design by Nick Calavera.
Select still photography courtesy of unsplashed dot com. Select music
cues by Doctor dream Chip, and various other stock music
and sound effects courtesy of freesound dot Org. Music from
Bigfoot Apocalypse and Thorax theme from Octoberpod composed by Nico Vitesi.
(50:35):
All other images, music, and FX cues, except where noted,
are sourced from within the public domain. Follow us on
YouTube at Octoberpod home video on Instagram and the app
I still call Twitter at octoberpodvhs and on TikTok and
Blue Sky at Octoberpod. Or find us and all of
(50:56):
our links on the world wide web at octoberpodviach dot com.
For business inquiries or story submissions, email Octoberpod at gmail
dot com. If you enjoyed this program, we'd be very
pleased if you told your friends about us, And while
you're at it, ride us a five star or equivalent review.
(51:17):
Wherever you were listening, the man who spoke to you
was mister Edward October.
Speaker 3 (51:29):
Welcome to Colony seven dash too.
Speaker 13 (51:33):
How often do you get let into a moon colony?
Speaker 3 (51:35):
Will?
Speaker 13 (51:36):
This is history in the making.
Speaker 6 (51:39):
New vaccine supposed to protect you from the zombie virus.
Speaker 4 (51:42):
Just a precaution.
Speaker 14 (51:45):
The name's Hen.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
I'm one of the local radio hosts, and you have
been assigned as my co host.
Speaker 13 (51:52):
Oh my god, are you okay? You're not looking too good?
Speaker 2 (51:55):
Are you?
Speaker 14 (51:57):
Shit?
Speaker 3 (51:58):
Soone just turned.
Speaker 15 (52:00):
I Oh shit?
Speaker 7 (52:04):
What Will? What do you mean?
Speaker 8 (52:07):
Do you think this is a scratch or a bite?
Speaker 6 (52:13):
Hey, it's only three days you do you know?
Speaker 2 (52:18):
Either returns or doesn't As it was that.
Speaker 8 (52:22):
Listen to Apocalypse Radio wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 6 (52:27):
When you're alone in your house but you'd like to
feel like you're not, the podcast Inside your House can
keep you company. Our show will make sure that you
run up the stairs at night when you turn off
the lights and check under your bed before you sleep.
We'll fill your dreams and nightmares with bizarre birds, creepy crawlers,
and heroic hitmen. We'll have you pulling back the shower
(52:51):
curtain just in case inside, eyeing your closets as you
walk past them. We'll bring you everything from the classics
that you know and love to thee and often silly
world of creepy pastas. You even got some stories written
just for the show that you won't hear anywhere else.
So go check out the podcast inside your House. We're
(53:11):
on all major platforms, as well as inside your pantry,
your cross base, and sitting at the foot of your
bed at night watching you sleep.
Speaker 15 (53:20):
The full moon hangs high above the tree line and
serves as a spotlight on a woman approaching a dilapidated cabin.
Speaker 13 (53:30):
God, we need to oil that door.
Speaker 15 (53:32):
Hey girls, what are you up to?
Speaker 5 (53:34):
Nothing much?
Speaker 15 (53:35):
Just sat here in a creepy cabin. But first, I've
just got to tell you about the murderer. They're just
caught in town.
Speaker 13 (53:41):
Oh thank god they caught him. I was losing sleep,
and believe me, sleeping with a room full of ghosts
isn't an easy task at the best of times. Anyway, Becks,
what about this murderer? Then afterwards, I've got one hell
of a spooky story to tell you, guys.
Speaker 15 (53:54):
Oh, make myself comfortable then. Spine Chillers and serial Killers
is a bi weekly podcast where three friends, Tash, Begs
and Emma discuss one true crime case and one tale
of the paranormal. If you enjoy spooky, murdery stuff with
a good dose of laughter, random singing, and the odd
off topic wander, the list is the podcast for you.
(54:17):
You can find them anywhere you get podcasts. Strictly for
adult audiences only, said stay safe, don't kill people, and
keep it weird.
Speaker 1 (54:33):
All right, here we go, that bastard Daylight Savings Time,
A Memoir of the Living Dead. A Memoir of the
Living Dead, and October pot intermission program by every Doctor
bur Yes you'll hear plain noises, but I'm just not
going to give a fuck I think, oh, maybe maybe
(54:56):
I care about this one. See, the trick is not minding.
That's the trick to everything, is just not caring.
Speaker 12 (55:06):
Four. In the seventeen eighties, several families scotch Irish immigrants
for Trappler.
Speaker 16 (55:15):
Here comes the plane again, flying above my f in house.
Here comes the plane again. I wish it was quiet
as a mouse.
Speaker 1 (55:40):
Twenty four angel, we gotta find crop duster.
Speaker 7 (55:46):
Now there's a.
Speaker 1 (55:50):
Hovercraft coming over. And World War one biplane and a
crop duster, a couple of choppers, rusty chavette with no muffler.
Speaker 7 (56:06):
Are we good people? All right? Twenty four plane?
Speaker 17 (56:15):
The plane, it flies into my brain. I am gonna
go Insaney, yay, cause the then mo the fuckin plane
flying up in.
Speaker 2 (56:34):
My mother the fucking brain? Okay?
Speaker 12 (56:42):
Should I do that? As Grandpa's voice, I kind of
feel weird? Should I go? Even if God sent the
littlest angel to help him, it'd be a blessing.
Speaker 1 (56:51):
I don't always turn on the heat, but when I do,
I prefer to do it. When we are mid sentence
recording audio.
Speaker 12 (57:00):
He told her that this old hobo had come into
town and cleaned and gutted some trap. No, he told
her that he is old, so each of these.
Speaker 1 (57:08):
Is going to have a crash sting. I didn't highlight
them in red, so they don't exist, motherfucker.
Speaker 12 (57:14):
And the decade since the manager. Nope, not the manager.
It's a massacre, masshaker.
Speaker 1 (57:20):
The next day, I was at school and casually chatting.
The next day, I was at school and casually chatting.
Speaker 14 (57:27):
Gourd curvy, God give me, hey guy, it's plain time, man,
son of a gun.
Speaker 1 (57:38):
It's air tavving time.
Speaker 7 (57:39):
Baby.
Speaker 14 (57:41):
I'm gonna lose my.
Speaker 17 (57:42):
Fucking mind, baby, Bob, Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (57:48):
It's the Big Bopper.
Speaker 14 (57:50):
Is the ghost of the Big Bopper and his plain?
Speaker 1 (57:52):
Hello Berbersion till lazed up in your face, piece of
shit hanging down. Okay.
Speaker 12 (58:01):
She became less lucid as her mud started to kick in,
but she repeatedly said things that were bad and sellers. No,
but I'm gonna take a drink.
Speaker 15 (58:11):
I'm sorry, a little bird.
Speaker 7 (58:15):
Did you miss me? Did you miss me? I am
a plane of new insane and American noise up and.
Speaker 12 (58:26):
Here we set up our tents not far from the remnants. Nope, remnants,
that's not remnants. It's remnants. I wanted it to be longer.
Speaker 1 (58:35):
To shield his face from the rain drops which now
streamed down. No fuck, the rain was falling. The boy
held his hand up, held up his hand to shield
his face from the rain drops, which now to shield
(58:58):
himself from the rain drops which now stream down his
face deep.
Speaker 12 (59:13):
A carpet of weeds and sticker bushes covered the warp.
Uneven Timber, They shiver me, Timbers, I said that wrong music.
Speaker 1 (59:23):
Start playing that shitty ass mad movies theme as underscore.
Speaker 12 (59:27):
Saw two girls no older than eleven or trault.
Speaker 1 (59:33):
The excitement is palpable.
Speaker 7 (59:36):
The excitement is palpable.
Speaker 12 (59:38):
All right, you'll if you need, you'll have to. That's
all I got. If you want me to speed it up,
if you want me to try to do an accent,
just let me know. I don't know, I don't know,
but anyway, good script. I like it so different from
the littlest angel I know, Mademoiselle Christian based, yours is
about dam its. All right, heart, you could do this child,
(01:00:04):
we prayed them. There Does that sound good?
Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
B be afraid.
Speaker 8 (01:00:15):
And no.
Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
Want nat.
Speaker 18 (01:02:20):
Doing?
Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
Do you mean fund ray? Let you cont
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