This episode masterfully reframes supernatural hauntings as a visceral allegory for the relentless cycle of trauma and psychological decay. It offers a sobering look at how the mind fractures when forced to witness the unbearable on repeat.
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Ad Nauseam | Creep CastAdded:
All right, here we go. All right, here we go. The Sally House.
>> What's this mold smell like?
>> It is. It It is super It's pungent.
>> Yeah, I'm telling you.
>> There's little like facts on the wall.
>> Oh, yeah. There is. Oh, >> okay.
Turn the light on. I'm scared.
>> Oh, I don't like that. Holy. All right.
Come in here. Look at this.
>> Is that Sally's briefcase?
>> That's the doctor's bag. If she died, this would be the table. Sally, >> this is a picture they have of Sally.
What are you talking about?
Sally began writhing with >> Sally began writhing with pain. Her fears increasing after a doctor surgical instruments as he carefully laid them out for the surgery. This is a nice [ __ ] fridge, dude. Look at this.
Sally's Pizza Hut classic range.
Welcome back to Creepcast. Today we are in an actual haunted house.
This is in uh Achetson, Kansas, the Sally House. And we decided that this time around when Isaiah came out to do uh some recordings that we're going to actually read a ghost story >> and a haunted house where I suppose like a little girl.
>> Yeah. I get here uh and Harry picks me up this time. Yes. Hot Hunter. Harry picks me up from the airport and they're like, "Hey, we're going to a haunted house." I'm like, "Great. Which one?"
They're like, "Here's the name." And I look it up and it's like, "Yeah, it's a place where a child was killed in a bodgege surgery. It's a It supposedly there's supposedly there's a demon in here. There's all kinds of stuff. And then not only that, there's a tornado warning. It's [ __ ] thundering outside. We might get stuck here. So, we're recording a couple episodes here.
This is our first one that we're recording for the night. And it is a ghost story called Adnauseium Admortem Ad Infinitum. Uh by Who's this by?
>> This is by uh our good friend Imperial Invective.
>> Oh, okay.
>> Yep. So, uh we've covered their stuff a lot. Uh, I have to shout out a story that Harry told me. When Harry reached out and asked if we could cover this, he said we could, but he thinks that he's got enough attention and we should give other authors attention. So, that's the kind of guy this dude is.
>> No, but I also don't care because this is a cool story that's come highly recommended and most importantly, I want to read it.
>> Yeah. I mean, that that was one thing that we were talking about before we started was you were like, "This is one that actually I've been wanting to read for a while." Which seems perfect for like a actual spooky setting. And I will say I'm a little jittery. The house the lights are all off in the house. I will say luckily there's other people here.
But I I'm ready to actually get actually pretty >> if you can see the uh the room around us. So this room, according to the legend, there's a young girl named Sally that came to this house um back when the family that lived here had a medical clinic in the basement because there wasn't a hospital nearby like late 1800s. and a little girl named Sally was brought by her mom one day and she died during an operation. So, the story is that Sally's ghost continues to haunt the house. Uh, and but before it became an attraction that you could come stay in, it was a house that other tenants and families lived in for a while. And there was one family who had a boy who was about 8 years old, I think, who was staying in this room and said that he would lay in this bed and watch his toys move in the night as if Sally's playing with them. So now people who come to the house, as you can see, will leave toys here for Sally as a sort of And we >> I left Margaret.
>> He left Margaret.
>> I will say I'll tell you the whole thing about Sally. They did that [ __ ] no favors with that self-portrait downstairs.
>> Rough drawing. That [ __ ] looks like a 43 year old dwarf downstairs. I'm telling you she's gonna start complaining Peter Dinklage just stealing her work too long.
>> I mean to be fair, she's got to be what 140 years old now.
>> Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
>> Yeah. So she It's been a bit >> It's been a bit.
>> Yeah.
>> Um so yeah, we're in we're in the room that Sally likes to play in with all of Sally's toys. Uh and there's also a few other spirits that are said to live here. Uh the same boy that lived here would wake up in the night, see an older woman, an older woman strangling him.
Um, there's stories of like a man, something about a man.
>> I I hate that we're getting ready to read a scary kind of story with >> There's another one right down the hall in the master bedroom. Uh, someone who was staying the night here had a dream of a dead boy who was chained to a pipe.
And then he go he wakes up from the dream and he goes to the room and he finds the pipe and he opens up a crevice in the wall and there's a bloodied shirt that the boy was wearing in the dream.
So there's there's the the young boy that was killed. There's Sally. There's the old woman. And also at some point there was a tenant who lived here who had a ritual in the basement.
>> Yeah.
>> Uh and the >> we went in the basement and it's >> and you can see where the ritual was because >> there's a hole into nothing that is literally fenced off.
>> Yes.
>> It's [ __ ] absurd. Isaiah, general first thoughts.
>> All right. So I am going to say this is pretty I don't like this at all.
What's wrong with it?
>> Uh, there's a giant black scorch mark in the middle of the floor. There's a chair in the corner facing me, a pillow, and someone's caged a hole in the wall.
>> Well, OKAY.
OKAY. All right. Hold on. So, that's that's actually [ __ ] >> wo. And then, we looked in the floor right here. Is this where the sigil was that was painted over the be elabub thing?
>> I thought it was on the wall. Was on the wall.
>> Did it just say downstairs?
>> And according to everything I read, he had a ritual to summon be elabub. If that means the devil to him or a satanic entity, >> which I have a lot of respect for. If you're going to aim for one, >> aim for the top.
>> Aim for the big one.
>> I mean, why why why play around?
>> Yeah. I was like, what are we? I mean, yeah.
>> Like, I'm here to summon Mammon. It's like, okay.
>> Yeah. Exactly. It's like meeting Hall of Notes and being like, "Can I meet Daryl or can I meet uh Hall or I want can I meet Oats?" You're like, "No, I want to meet Daryl Hall." You know what I mean?
Uh so without further ado, um one also I want to say we should keep an eye on the front door, make sure it's locked because there was like people outside there walk around. She's like, "I love this place.
>> You should go upstairs eightball." And all that kind of stuff.
>> As we came in, every house nearby was like peering in watching us. Um, the next door neighbor, which I >> I'm not going to go into, but I will say the next door neighbor's house is far more haunting than >> I I when we when we rolled up, I was like, "There it is." And they're like, "No, it's the one next door." And I'm like, "Oh my god."
>> Where?
>> There it is. Right here to the right.
The right.
>> Oh, the right.
>> That one. The twotory one.
>> Oh my god.
>> It even has a trash can.
>> Two trash can.
>> Oh my god.
>> Oh my god.
>> First impressions lit. First impressions is I will say this. The seconds story window is actually worth.
>> Also, this blue Ford Focus. Why do I feel like someone's going to be in here?
This is 100% it right here.
>> Are you sure about that?
>> Yeah.
>> It has an address and trash can.
>> Is the one is Is it the one next to it?
I might be the one next to it. If this is not the Sally House and that's just like a poor person's house.
>> I'm going to be horrified.
a person's dilapidated house next to a literal haunted house is unfucking real.
>> Is the one next to it?
>> No.
>> Yeah, there there was a good 3 minutes of Hunter being like, "This is the scariest house I've ever seen."
>> Well, I was like, "Oh my god, I saw someone look at me from the top and I thought it was a ghost there." It's like, "No, it was just the person next house down." So Hunter spent like 10 minutes being like, "This is the worst thing I've seen in my life. This is horrible." I've been I've been horri I've been I've been scaring myself silly ever since I've been here.
>> I I kid you not. I went outside on the front porch to help Harry carry something in and I heard a group of women singing.
>> Yeah.
>> There is kind of >> and and it wasn't like it wasn't like I hopped off the plane. It was like Yeah.
>> Yeah. I if if you if you were going to be a witch and you're like, I want to hang out some other like [ __ ] witches. Why would you not live near a house like this?
>> You know what I mean?
>> It was a chorus of women.
>> It's a course of say what you mean to say a course of witches is what you meant to say.
>> Yeah. Well, without further ado, should we get in?
>> So, Imperial Invective covered a lot of his stories uh on the podcast before.
Incredible author. We'll have all of his stuff linked in the description.
>> What was one that he did?
>> Uh the insourced in the earth.
>> Oh, sure. Okay.
>> Uh >> it bleeds. It >> It bleeds. that breeds.
>> That's a great one.
>> Yeah. And there was one more we covered by him. I can't remember right now.
>> Which one?
>> Fleshgate.
>> Fleshgate. That's right. That's right.
Yeah.
>> Was it Fleshgate?
>> Yeah. Flesh.
>> What are you asking me? I don't know.
>> The one about them going into the woods and there one of them was a mimic.
>> Okay. Yeah. Sure.
>> So, bunch of cool stuff. Uh, friend of the show. We like it. And every time we read him, people recommend this story as one of his best.
>> My foot's asleep.
>> Okay, honey. It's numb up. I I I tell you what, every time I always sit and I always sit on my left foot and I always think it's my diabetes that's going to like cut away the circ. I don't know.
I'm So anyways, add nauseium. This is a three-part chapter one. So >> it's it's fine if your foot falls asleep, but the moaning thing you did leading up to it, I didn't like that.
>> Sally, stop it.
>> Okay.
>> Add nauseium, add mortm, and add infinitum. So let's start it, man.
>> All right, let's begin beginning with our first connection. Adnauseium, which adnauseium means the illness, correct? I think this is Latin.
>> I thought it's >> I thought I legitimately thought that it was just >> ad add infinitum means >> Oh, ad nausea means to nausea.
>> Yeah, to nausea repeated.
>> So, it would be to illness, to death, admort, and add infin forever.
>> I thought ad nausea was just was legitimately just a magic card.
>> It is also magical.
>> Well, that too.
>> Well, that's all I knew if I meant God damn. Wait. Will you >> that the shoe's going to come flying off?
>> It's not coming off.
>> My foot's all swole up.
>> Okay. All right. Beginning with our first >> I am so sweaty and hot here.
>> Do you need a whistle?
>> I need a I tell you what I need. Let me goddamn swig of this real quick. All right. Swig break.
How do you wake up a foot? You >> You got to stand up.
>> You got to stand up. You act You act like we're about to play in the Super Bowl.
So, >> dude, I I feel like I've been running [ __ ] Oklahoma drills all day.
>> All right, go ahead.
>> Adnauseium, have you ever seen a ghost? I don't usually ask the question because everyone will typically start telling a typically [ __ ] story about seeing an old woman in their peripheral vision one late night, hearing the voice of their deceased grandfather, asking about the kids, or maybe even picking up a phantom hitchhiker on a late night after driving for too long. I asked this question because I want you to have your spiritual encounter on your mind when I tell you my story.
My encounter with the afterlife wasn't very typical, and I doubt that after listening to my story, you'll be able to see yours as ordinary either.
>> Kind of a cliche, isn't it? The whole right, oh, if I tell you my haunted story, oh, I saw an old woman.
>> Yeah.
>> What what what would be one where it's a curveball where you're like, "Oh, damn."
You know what would you if you were getting a haunting I'd be like I if I I heard like imagine this not a good example so don't judge me but like a fus plant >> when >> what do you mean by fus plant?
>> See exactly >> I don't know >> you just said fus plant.
>> A haunted fus plant.
>> Okay that's you gave us the >> you you wake up and there you wake up and there's a plant in your room. You're >> right. I thought >> would that not be kind of creepy?
>> What is, >> you know? Okay, I see. Okay, >> I'm saying that it's always an old woman.
>> So, it took three It took three attempts for you to get to what the fus plant does. I was actually >> couldn't have been more clear on the first one. Couldn't have been more clear on the first one.
>> Could have actually mine completely completely clear sweat burning my eyes and I'm telling you right now that it was >> You're not that sweaty. I'm looking at you right now. You're not >> I thought you meant like come down and let me tell you my tale. I thought like what's another alternative for that?
>> No, no. I'm just saying that in when people tell you their haunted stories, they always say, "Oh, it's a little kid.
>> It's a old woman." I'm saying that someone's just like, "There's a there's a random plant in my room every night."
>> Well, that that'd be kind of creepy, huh? I'm just I'm picturing another living object basically.
>> Right. Right.
>> Cuz you were like a rock. I'd be like, "Who gives a shit?"
>> People do that with like cats a lot.
Like strange cats begin to appear.
>> Yeah. I never really care about animals.
You know what I mean? Unless Imagine >> that you wake up and there's a grizzly bear in your room.
>> Well, a grizzly bear.
>> I bet you care real quick.
>> Yeah. a haunted grizzly and >> yeah that's worst case scenario.
>> What would a hunted grizzly would he talk >> if you want him to?
>> I can now speak your language.
>> You don't speak bear with me, [ __ ] That's how we're talking to each other. He's like, "Fine, you win."
>> All right, paragraph two.
>> I think we're still in paragraph.
Oh, it all started in early 2001 when I was 13 years old. My family had just moved to a new city after my father lost his job. He was lucky enough to find work in a small town in Michigan. Town Kalamazoo was a quaint and quiet community.
Just Kazoo. It's like it's [ __ ] like Willy Wonka town or something. Where do you live? I live in Kalamazoo.
>> It is a real town.
>> I don't care. Shane, >> I wouldn't move there. Can you imagine going on Zillow and looking at houses in Kamazoo?
>> What state's Kazoo?
>> That's what I want.
>> Oh, Michigan. Yeah, small town of Michigan.
>> Oh, yeah. There you go.
>> Yeah, that explains it.
>> Clean water in Kalamazoo, they say.
>> Well, yeah. It has to be going somewhere.
>> Leg falling asleep now.
Are you just going to lose feeling in your >> I think I might be paralyzed by the end of this reading. I didn't realize how much my body needed a chair. There's There's Sally's crib here. I might actually crawl in that here.
>> That will get us haunted.
We moved there midway through the school year. So, I found that I had about 5 or 6 months of free time before I could attend school and meet the other kids.
My neighborhood was built for younger couples, so there weren't too many kids to hang out with during this time. The cold weather forced me inside most of this time. I was fine with being indoors. I'm an avid gamer and love survival horror games. Spent most of my time in my room, which was in the basement, playing games and trying to distract myself from the fact that I had left my social circle and was now in a new and unfamiliar place. I was a big fan of Resident Evil and was slowly getting into Silent Hill around that time. Just a small note about my house in Kalamazoo. It had a main floor with a kitchen, living room, and a bedroom bathroom. The basement had a wide open area, my room, and a room with a water heater off to the side. See, because we're in here, I can only imagine this house's basement.
>> So, I imagine like that dungeon set up with like >> a million%. Also, you describing that I'm not even jo like my [ __ ] tightening. And then there's even there's even there's even like cracks of thunder outside of >> I'm reading you hear like the rumble >> people when you watch this back you're going to see me look at my laptop as if I'm reading but I just have a thousand yard stare like this there's like this bear does like I don't like a [ __ ] look at him move >> that bear was not in that position.
>> It Yes, it was. No, it wasn't cuz the bear the bear cuz I was going to make a joke when we sat down cuz it was facing directly at me.
>> Nick's probably bumped into it.
>> He's probably bumped it. But I but I had on mine like I'm going to make a joke about that bear keeps looking at me.
>> Nick, did you bump it?
>> Now the bear's looking at you.
>> Don't shake your head. No, [ __ ] >> The bear is looking directly at you.
>> He's looking right at me. Doesn't care about me. Turn him.
>> No, I'm not touching that bear.
>> Even him.
>> I'm not touching that. I'm touching that bear. You're touching that bear.
>> I'll put my computer up. So, while we were in the basement, >> um I took care when I got down there where the sigil was on the ground >> where they said like the summoning ritual was.
>> Yeah.
>> Um I saw that and I was like, "Oh, I'm not going to step on it." And the first thing you did >> was stomp all over it as soon as we got down there.
>> Okay. No one told me about the sigil on the floor.
>> Okay. Well, when we walked down, I said, "Hey, Hunter, that must be where he drew the sigil on the floor."
>> I'm pretty sure I said, "No."
>> And you're like, "Nah, it was on the wall." And then you stand on it to look on the wall.
>> Where is it?
>> I think the bear knows you did that.
>> No, no, no.
>> We get a bear cam going. I feel like >> How about Maybe that is a nanny cam.
>> Are are people [ __ ] in Sally's room?
Oh, they bet they have hidden cameras in here somewhere.
>> People always talk about Airbnb stuff where they like they'll sit there and cuz those old dudes, they'll sell those they'll sell those videos and people tell you a [ __ ] [ __ ] or they'll just beat their [ __ ] off to it or something like that, but they sell that [ __ ] all the time.
>> How do we know there isn't a [ __ ] Sally cam that's going for sale?
>> Pirates Bay, Sally Cam, Pirates Bay.
>> I feel like there isn't an elite cuz like the whole thing with those like >> Peeping Tom videos is there's a market for it because people are looking to like get their rocks off that way. M >> um I feel like there isn't a plethora of horror haunted house enthusiasts.
>> Well, I think they get the hidden footage.
>> There might not be a lot of people that are into it because there's already like 70 million YouTube videos that people hear. But see, what are they doing off camera? That's See, that's what the That's what that [ __ ] teddy bear is looking at.
>> I'm trying to say, I bet you some guy has a Snapchat story of him getting his dick sucked right here.
>> Oh, yeah.
>> No.
>> Oh, a million%. Oh, 100%. Him sitting there and he's like he's doing this to the camera >> for one. for one.
>> It has it has three days grace.
>> I can't explain this hell.
>> All right. He's getting his dick. Okay.
Okay. You can see >> one both of you to assume that someone who rents out the haunted Sally house >> has and also >> No, I don't I don't think so.
to come in here to like the the Sally like sanctuary area where everyone leaves her toys and like letters and birthday cards and stuff and do that.
You deserve whatever happens.
>> I'm not saying that they got away scotfree. I'm just saying that it 100% happened.
>> And then they go flying through the staircase. This is definitely not the original window. People are definitely flooring on right out of the house. It was built sometime in the 1900s and was sorry I I have I'm so sorry. Oh god, the blood's going back in my foot and it tingles.
It would feel That would feel really good if I smacked it right now. Good.
No. No. It hurts so bad when your foot's waking up and something hits it.
>> Get it.
>> I'm not I don't like the way you're saying that.
>> Oh, >> yeah. It feels weird.
>> Pins and needles.
>> Yeah.
Okay.
>> Okay. All right. ALL RIGHT.
>> MANY TIMES I've tried.
>> This is a scary story podcast.
God, it feels like I'm like I think I can't tell if I'm dying. My [ __ ] foot is unbeliev Oh my god.
>> Take your shoe off. Take your shoes off.
>> You want me to?
>> Yeah.
>> It's going to stink.
>> Well, >> yeah, I'll leave it on.
>> Okay.
>> It's going to stink soon.
>> Can I read the story? No, >> I'm sorry, man. I'm like winded. I'm sitting here and I'm [ __ ] here. Let me do I'm going to do a cute thing here.
I'm going to get on my belly.
Here we go.
Kicking your feet in the air here. I just need a little second here. All right. Go ahead. Keep read. Just keep breathing. Let me do my thing. You just keep reading.
>> There's no way I can read with you doing this to the >> This This is it.
>> Okay.
>> The house was old. It was built sometime in the 1900s and was refitted to be more modern. Asbestous was replaced by insulation. Lead paint was removed and copper tubing was put in. It reminded me of the old ship of Thesius conundrum. At what point of repairing and replacing parts does the house stop being the same house and become a completely new house?
Did I live in a house that was almost 100 or was it now a completely new building? The house had its fair share of problems. It was freezing in the winter due to poor heating, particularly in the basement. Every now and then, I would wake up to find my breath fogging in the air. I slept with a heater in my room to combat this invasive cold. I accepted this drawback in exchange for the privacy that it afforded me, and as a teenager, privacy was of the utmost importance. The house also made sounds at night. My parents told me that it was just settling on its foundation, but I wasn't so sure.
It started with the most innocuous of things. Whenever I was settling down for the night, the sound of a door lightly bumping into the frame could be heard.
At first, I thought it was just a wind current generated by the heating system or pressure change pushing a door in the basement closed. I told myself that the next few nights it happened. I held tight to that belief when the sound persisted even after shutting all the doors in the basement to cut down on flow through.
Another noise that was almost always happening at night was a sound of my bed creaking. At first, I thought it was me turning in bed and making that sound.
Then it started happening even when I wasn't moving. I spent a few nights lying completely still, waiting for the sound of my bed shifting. I would always look over at the other side of the bed, but there wasn't anything there.
Eventually, I began to get used to the sounds and they became background noise.
Routine occurrence in my life. Few days passed. You ever have anything like that happen to you?
>> He's completely lounging now. You laid on your side kicking your feet on.
>> You ever had anything like that happen to you?
>> Has anything happened like that to you before?
>> Um, like specifically the bed thing.
>> I remember after my uh after my grandfather passed away, who I was really close with.
>> RIP. I >> Jesus.
>> I said hey, rest in peace, Grims.
>> I had a I had a dream.
um of lying in the bed and he came in and sat at the end of the bed and uh talked to me and then I woke up.
>> He became your sleep paralysis.
>> Your grandpa became your sleep.
>> This was in a completely pleasant way.
This wasn't a scary way at all.
>> What was the conversation?
>> It was It was just me saying um that I'm afraid I'm going to miss him and he said it's not going to be forever.
>> He said, "Shut the [ __ ] up, loser.
You're such a You're so >> He said, "Dude, you sound hella gay right now.
>> Damn, dude. You're gay as hell."
>> Yeah, you missed your grandpa.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Yeah. No. Yeah, that's that's what I was going to say. Yeah, there they would say about whenever I would go to my my buddy's house and his grandma would be like, "Jord, there's a there's A LITTLE BOY IN the closet." And we kept thinking that it was one of our friends that was like like, "What?" We go in there, nothing is there.
>> Mhm.
>> So it to freak us out cuz she's like, "Oh, I see sitting around one time." It just turned out she was like a horrible alcoholic.
She just was like super drunk up, you know, just like I saw him last night.
When you get older, you're like, "There's another Wait, hold on. An old woman said, "There's a boy in the closet." And your first thought was, "Must must be one of my pals hiding in the closet. You know, you hang around. You're goofing around."
>> Oh, you're saying there'd be a large group of guys.
>> Yeah. It's like a big hangout.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Like, was Lance back there?
>> That's what I thought you were saying.
It's like, oh, he gets in old women's closets all the time.
>> Grandma's outfits.
>> Yeah. Yeah. But she just drank herself into imagining. Oh my god. I I There was one time we were sitting there, not even joking. She's like, "You guys want pizza?" We were like, "Sure." That crazy [ __ ] took out a cookie sheet at 450° that had two Totino's pizzas on it fully cooked. She did Canadian bacon.
What? She like looked at the tortilla pizzas, grabbed the cookie sheet with her bare hand. was like sizzling. She set it on the oven, didn't flinch, didn't move a goddamn muscle, and she was like Canadian bacon and never touched the pizzas once. Only the cookie sheet. She lift her fingers and she touched it. She was just drunk out of her mouth.
>> Out of her gourd.
>> Gosh.
>> Hey, rip to her, too, though, dude.
She's gone.
>> She actually uh she visited me in my dream. She said I got like tons of [ __ ] and stuff.
>> Okay. All right. opposite of Isaiah.
>> Okay. All right.
>> You should learn something from your friend.
>> You know what's funny? I've told like 10 people that story and every one of them's like, "That's so sweet." And then you come along.
>> You got to be misremembering, dude.
>> You said some [ __ ] up stuff.
>> Yeah. All right. All right. Few days passed with the persistent sounds. I would have forgotten about it had I not opened my eyes late one night. I had just heard the creaking sound and I rolled over to look across the bed. Saw another person right next to me. My heart leapt into my throat and my stomach sank. She was facing away from me and her long hair ran down her back.
She was wearing a white night gown. I laid on the bed paralyzed and watched her. Too afraid to move, too afraid to scream. She rocked back and forth for a few minutes before getting up slowly.
Bed creaked as she moved into a sitting position. She had her hands in front of her face. She sat in that position for a few minutes before she got up and moved towards the door. She moved slowly.
When she reached the door, her hand extended towards the door knob. She didn't open it. She just phased through the door and it moved slightly with her passing through it.
I didn't sleep for the rest of the night. That's interesting. All the sounds you heard, the creaking on the bed, the door bumping is her doing that same path every night. When was the night gown? So, like early 1900s.
>> I mean, it's been traditionally a thing for probably several centuries, but they kind of phased out of popularity around like early 1900s, I'd say. At what point do they start stop shifting from night gowns to like I don't know like somebody say like Walmart with like Cookie Monster sweatpants.
>> Cookie Monster sweatpants came later.
>> You know what I'm talking about though?
>> You think it's 100 years from now it's just like yeah I woke and there was a morbidly obese woman with >> Cookie Monster sweatpants and a Captain America shirt.
>> She faced the door. I'm saying like there's got to be at a point there's going to be a shift. I feel like I feel like we should cut this, but I imagine there's a lot of fellas waking up to that right now.
As I as I roll around on the floor like [ __ ] was that [ __ ] slug gorb galop. What the [ __ ] is that? I am the galopa. Whatever the [ __ ] Yeah. Somebody's listen with their AirPods. They just look over next to him. Oh, damn. Just single tear cellum nom.
I spent the next couple of nights sleeping upstairs in the guest room. I lied and told my parents that it was too cold downstairs. I knew I couldn't tell them what I saw. They were already worried about my adjustment to a new city. They didn't need to think that I was going crazy.
I stayed in the guest room for a few nights before they began to get suspicious and started asking if anything was wrong. I went to bed in my room the next night and I saw her again.
I didn't just see her, I heard her as well. I tried to stay up that night, but I eventually drifted off. As I was about to really go under, I became aware. So, I was just like, he's rush all time.
likely whispering like we can hear all of it, dude. Like all kinds of I've been ignoring it, but it sounds like >> I can't, but I tried to.
>> I sound like a raccoon going through a trash can. Just >> just new equipment flipping over for no reason. Stop getting scattered.
>> It's time to talk about something scary.
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I tried to stay up that night, but I eventually drifted off. As I was about to really go under, I became aware of a sound softly repeating in my room. I opened my eyes and she was there in my bed. She was still rocking slightly and I realized what the sound I was hearing.
She was crying softly. She was doing her best to stifle her sobs, but they were just barely audible.
I should have been scared, but as I listened to her pitiful bawling, felt nothing but sympathy.
She rose to a sitting position and wept for a few minutes before leaving my room. I managed to go to sleep a few hours later on the floor next to my bed.
The idea of waking up in the middle of the night and seeing her facing me, dead eyes looking right into mine was a terrifying thought.
She didn't seem to be aware that there was someone else in bed with her, and I had no intention of making her aware of my presence. I slept on the uncomfortable floor in front of the heater the rest of the night. She appeared every night in my room for the next week. She always repeated the same motions. At the end of the week, I decided to try and make contact with her. I was beginning to feel like a voyeristic creep watching her at her most raw and unguarded moment. She appeared, let her cry for a few minutes before slowly reaching out my hand. A trembling hand slowly crept across the bed sheets. I was terrified that I might get her attention and provoke her wrath.
I drew closer and closer to her shoulder.
Blew out a laden sigh and reached forward only to see my fingers slid right through her. It was the oddest sensation I ever experienced in my life.
My mind told me that I wasn't feeling anything, but it still felt like I had touched her. Later, when I was older, I would come across an article explaining phantom limb syndrome. Talked about how amputees would sometimes feel sensations in their lost limb despite the fact that it was no longer there. I think that's the closest analogy I can come up with.
It was feeling something that was not there. At least no longer there. It's like when you play VR games and when you get hurt, you feel it in real life.
>> It's like phantom pain. Like phantom pain gear solid 5.
>> It's like It's like when I'm in a VR chat room and say my name.
>> It's like when I'm in a VR chat room and someone walks through me and it hurts extremely bad.
My attempt at contact galvanized me. I shot out of the bed and walked around to the other side. She had just risen to a sitting position and was now facing me.
She was a few years older than me. If I had to guess, I would say she was 16 or 17. She had relatively plain features, but there is an endearing quality to her simple style. I was shocked and a little embarrassed to be thinking of her like that. I was busy mentally casticating myself when she stood up and moved right through me. If trying to touch her was discomforting, feeling her pass through me was the oddest sensation I ever felt.
I had to sit down and catch my breath, still my heart. The next night, I tried to make contact again, but met with the same results. Instead of watching her leave the room and make the sound of the door bumping against its frame, I decided that I had to follow her. I had to figure out what happened to her. She moved slowly through the basement, but wasn't heading in the direction of the stairs. She was instead heading towards the boiler room. I followed her to the door, but as soon as I got within reach of the handle, I felt my blood turn cold. My skin prickled. She faced through the door and I stood outside. I was afraid of what might happen to me when I entered that room. I was more worried of what I would find when there.
I didn't enter the boiler room until a week before class began. I won't lie, those first few months in Kalamazoo, Michigan were some of the loneliest of my life. My friends back in Simsbury, Connecticut were moving on with their lives, and I felt like I was being left behind. Left alone. I didn't have any friends in Calamazoo yet. And to tell you the truth, I was beginning to see this nightly wraith as a companion, kindred spirit. She was alone and sad, just like me. Every night I would wake up to the sound of her suffering and I would follow her to the boiler room.
Week before class began for me, I entered the boiler room with her. I had stood outside the door for a few minutes trying to steal myself for what I might see. My entire body was screaming at me to run back to my room and never go near that boiler room again. But I had to know what happened next. I drew in a deep breath and blew it out. I grasped the doororknob and turned it. The door swung into the room and I was at eye level with her feet. I swayed back and forth like a pendulum, powered by her frantic kicking in an attempt to find some purchase.
I stifled the scream when I realized that she wasn't levitating like a ghost.
She was hanging from a beam in the ceiling.
>> So clearly she took her own life.
>> Yes.
>> When she was actually alive.
>> Yeah. When this house was older, she was depressed and then one night couldn't take it anymore. Went to the boiler room and did that.
>> Do you think that she's depressed and like she's just reenacting it or do you think that she's depressed from the aftermath?
>> I think since it's the same effect over and over, it's like a death echo, like someone reliving the last of their life over and over.
>> They're just on repeat over and over again.
>> Like a cycle of sorts. I left the room and went back to my bed. There was nothing more I could do, and I had no intention of spending any more time than necessary in that boiler room. I laid in bed and slowly curled up into a fetal position. I prided myself in not being the kind of person who cried openly, but at that moment, the floodgates broke and I wept. My throat felt raw, my eyes stung with tears. I sobbed for a few moments before I realized I was not alone. She was in bed across from me and weeping in that same position she had always been in. I tried to find out who she was, but the realtor was tight-lipped about the house's previous occupants and wasn't interested in chatting. I pressed her for more information, and she finally caved and confessed to not really knowing too much about the house's history. I went to the library, but I failed to what?
>> It's just funny. It's like I pressed the real dirty, she didn't know anything.
All right, fine. I don't know nothing.
You know what I mean? It's like, why would you not just say that for >> I'll talk. I'm not sure.
I went to the library, but I failed to turn up any information when reading a book on the history of the area. I even tried asking the neighbors about the previous owners, but the two families that lived there before ours didn't have a daughter or only had an infant daughter when they occupied the house. I had no idea about the girl who appeared every night and hung herself in the boiler room. It was now a routine for me. I'd wake up in the middle of the night around the time she would appear.
I'm ashamed to admit it, but sometimes I found myself waiting for her. I was hopeful that someday I would break through and tell her what I had wanted to say ever since I saw her. I would tell her that she didn't deserve the fate she was suffering. I would tell her how lonely I was, how desperate I was for someone to talk to. I would tell her I don't know. I always stayed behind when she left the room. I had walked into the boiler room during the day once and I saw her hanging there. She was gasping and clawing desperately at her neck as she slowly esphyxiated.
She rocked back and forth in the room and her feet frantically kicked around looking for some purchase to save herself. I did scream then. I had to make up a story about seeing a shadow for my mom when she came up downstairs and saw me pale as a ghost and shivering. I started class and began to make some new friends. I even had a few classmates over to hang out. I remember one time we were playing a video game and the girl passed right through him on her way to the boiler room. My friends couldn't see her nor my parents. Only I could. I wondered for a bit if I was going crazy and that was why only I could see her. But I'm not sure that's the case. Well, at least not going crazy back then. She was repeating, always reliving her last moments. She would start out weeping on the bed. Then she would rise to a sitting position for a bit before going to the boiler room and hanging herself. This happened almost every night, but on a few occasions I did catch her walking through the doors on the way to her demise during the day.
Must have seen her hundreds, no thousands of times during my time in Kalamazoo.
Sometimes I would try and talk to her.
Sometimes I would cry. Sometimes I would do nothing. Took me a few years to try and figure it all out, but I finally did. I realized what she was doing. I realized what the afterlife was like.
There isn't a heaven or a hell, at least not in the literal sense. There are only those last few moments of your life, reiterating like a broken record. She was reliving those final moments, maybe trying to make sense of it all. Maybe she wanted to choose another path, but in the end, she always came around full circle to the noose in the boiler room.
This is why the concept of death scares me so much. HP Lovecraft said the oldest emotion is fear. And the most powerful of all fears is our fear of the unknown.
I think he's wrong about that. I know what's waiting for us all when we die.
And that is the scariest thought I can think of.
I'm so terrified that when I die, I will stay behind on this earth, repeating my last moments ad nauseium, trying to make sense of my last minutes.
This is what is waiting for us all after it is all said and done. And I know that the end is inevitably approaching.
>> The end of ad nauseium.
>> Mhm.
>> Do you think that these stories are going to be connected through?
>> Yeah, I think it's going to be the same person. Well, I do mean the same ghost or is it just going to be this is his encounter with this?
>> It's probably going to be different encounters if I had to guess. Um, so the title Adnauseium at Mortime Infinum is kind of the idea that like again with what we said it being like, you know, to the point of sickness, to the point of death, forever. It's like repeating your last moments on and on and on without fail. Um, so I think we're going to see other examples of that. Seems like also this concept of like the afterlife that he's saying almost feels like a purgatory like like our definition of purgatory, you know?
Yeah.
>> Reliving their kind of ex existing in this state of just like perpetual.
>> Scared me.
>> Knocking over that toilet really got to you, huh?
>> This tiny little toilet. Mhm. Ew. What the [ __ ] Oh my god. It's a skibity toilet.
>> No, it's not.
>> It is. It is a skiitty toilet.
Get that.
>> Can his head not pop out? You have to hit the flusher.
>> Well, the flusher pushes him down. What is there a button or a lever somewhere to make him go? Oh, at the base of the toilet.
>> That is the scariest thing that's happened since we got here.
That pushes his head down.
What kind of monster left little Sally?
A skippy toilet.
>> See, this is the This is the Cookie Monster sweatpants or it's like sweatpants with a bunch of Buddhas on it and it says built like a Buddha.
>> Or that's one of our audience members.
If one of our audience members left the Skibbity toilet, scroll down a little bit. Hit the iconic >> 100%.
>> All right. Ad Mortem.
>> Admortem.
I do agree with you about the feels like a penance.
>> We live in the final.
>> Well, I thought that was I like his way of also adding in the adnauseium. Like that's my fear of doing this ad nauseium. It's kind of a fun little tie in. I'm curious to see how >> being stuck in that forever. Yeah. The last moment. Yeah.
>> Admortem. He's also like a what is it?
Clairvoyance.
>> Is that somebody who can talk to the like >> clairvoyance have the natural ability to see the dead or the other side or something?
>> That's what I'm I'm like wondering. It seems like this character is like that kind of person.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Just has the ability to >> Yeah.
>> Admortem.
I was just starting my junior year in high school when my grandfather came to visit. He was my father's father and he had lived in California most of his life. He used to smoke like a chimney, but a few years back he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He was put on oxygen and had to give up smoking which did nothing to improve his canankerous nature. He lived across the country but had come up to Michigan to visit with my family.
My relationship with my grandpa was always strained. If you wanted to be pleasant, you would say that he was an old-fashioned man. If you wanted to be honest, you would say that he was a racist and a sexist who used to beat his children when they disobeyed him.
My father was always honest about how he was treated by him when he was growing up. And because I loved my father, I found my relationship with my grandfather to be adversarial.
He originally had come up to visit for a week, but due to health issues, he ended up staying in Michigan for over a year to be cared for.
My grandfather's extended stay only served to put a strain on our relationship.
We rarely talked and when we did, I managed the conversation in the coldest fashion.
Since my grandfather was suffering from lung cancer, yet carry around an oxygen tank. Manufacturers must have had a sense of humor because they named the gargantuan machine the Liberator.
The tank was 100 or so pound and set in a corner by the entrance of the house.
The oxygen cord gave my grandpa 500 ft to move around the house.
saw the Liberator as a massive ball and chain that anchored him to the guest room, kitchen, bathroom, the dining room. Grandfather was suffering from lung cancer. He had to take a regimen of pills to keep himself going dayto-day, blood pressure medication, bronco dilators, opioids, and about a dozen other supplements and vitamins. The cancer had rotted away his lungs to the point that the oxygen was necessary to keep him alive. He could barely move without gasping for breath. And when he talked came out as a rasp.
The sounds of his respirator clicking on and off and his wheezing gasp became a fixture of our everyday life. We'd been living here in Calamazoo, Michigan for about 3 years before my grandfather came to live with us. At this time, I was accustomed to my nocturnal and sometimes dural visitor who wept in my room before proceeding to the boiler room and hanging herself. My latest attempt to contact her was through a Ouija board.
stuck one of my friends into the house through the emergency fire escape the basement had, which was just a ladder built in an al cove that led outside.
She believed that there were ghosts and that only a select few were attuned enough to see them. I didn't tell her about my encounters. I only hinted that I thought there was something paranormal happening in my room. She snuck in during the night and brought her board with her. We both sat on my bed and put our hands on the Ouija board. I lit a few candles to set the mood. She said quietly, afraid to wake my parents.
>> Spirits of this house, we beseech thee.
>> Always wondered why people thought ghosts talk like surfs from medieval times, even if they died well after it.
If you were trying to contact your loved one, would you talk to them like you were a 1920s gangster?
>> Yeah, you see, I love you. I miss you every day, Pops. she continued.
>> If there's anyone here besides us, move the plane chat and make us aware of your presence.
>> We sat for a few moments with our fingers on the planchet. After nothing happened, she took her hands away and said, >> "I guess the noises you've been hearing was just the house settling."
>> Cracked a smile because out of the corner of my eyes, I could see the wraith weeping on my bed.
My friend was only a few inches away from the ghostly girl who haunted the basement of my home and couldn't even see her. Talked for a bit and then she left. I walked her back to her house and told her good night. When I snuck back into my house, the sound of my grandfather's respirator filled my ears and covered up any noise I might have made sneaking into my room. Couple weeks passed and my grandfather's condition deteriorated.
He was now confined to the guest room.
He could barely talk and when he managed, he had to pause between sentences to catch his breath. Sometimes when he overexerted himself, his body was racked with congested coughs and wheezing rafts. My mother took care of him because my father was working and I was at school. Out of everyone in the house, my mother's relationship with my grandfather was probably the best. She went out and picked up his prescriptions, cooked food for him, kept him company, and changed his sheets.
As per his traditionalism, he treated her more like a servant than a person.
Quest were commands and demands. Despite this, my mom treated him with kindness and compassion. Remember the last time I saw my grandfather? I was getting ready for school and he was telling her that he was going to rest and asked if she could pick up his prescription. He now spent most of his time in bed and was developing bed sores and had to use a bed pan to relieve himself. He had a coughing fit and he covered his mouth with a handkerchief. I think that I saw something red staining that handkerchief. But I realized that that little observation that I make now is tainted by the memory of what happened to him later. When I returned home that day, I knew something was wrong the moment I walked through the door. There was something off about the house. There was something missing. Took me a moment to realize what it was. The house was completely quiet. The omnipresent sound of the respirator pumping oxygen was no longer present. The liberator sat in the corner, silent like the grave. I went upstairs to find my mother in the guest room, tripping the bed sheets and pillowcases. She had been crying, but wasn't at that moment. My mom didn't have to say the words, but she did anyways. He died. His heart just stopped. There's nothing that I could have done. I pulled her into a hug and she broke into a fresh set of tears. I offered to help her wash the bed sheets, but she told me it wasn't necessary.
This part may make me seem like a horrible person, but I was glad she turned down my offer. My grandfather died. It evacuated, and the smell was horrible. She washed the sheets as best she could, but ended up throwing everything away. My father took the news like any son would take the news of his father's death. I don't know what I was expecting from him. For some reason, I thought he would be angry. Angry at the fact that his father had never told him goodbye, never told him that he loved him, or that he was proud of him. He wasn't angry. He was just quiet for a while. He didn't cry at that moment, but I remember going upstairs from the basement and hearing the soft, hushed sounds of him crying in the night. Tried to take my grandfather's death as stoically as possible. I didn't cry until the funeral and then the floodgates broke and I wept as they lowered him in the ground. He may have been a racist, sexist, abusive old man, but he was still my grandfather. He was family and he was gone. The worst thought I had was the realization that even though I loved my grandfather because he was family, I didn't like him. The next month was relatively quiet. My mom and dad dealt with getting his affairs in order and tending to his will. I can't tell you exactly when they started, but I can tell you when I first became aware of the sounds. I was sneaking outside at night to have a cigarette and I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. I'd become so accustomed to the sound that it took me a few seconds to realize what was wrong.
I was hearing the worrying and hissing of the liberator.
We had donated the oxygen system a week ago to the nursing home. I paused in the darkened hallway and listened. It was a slow and steady sound. Listening to that noise chilled my blood and made my stomach sink. It must have stopped still and waited for that sound to stop for a few minutes. Didn't stop. If anything, the sound grew louder. I lied to myself and said it was a trick my mind was playing on me. I went downstairs back to my bedroom and passed by the ghost girl as she proceeded to her death. I kept lying to myself for the next couple of days as the noise of the Liberator got progressively louder and was joined by something almost undetectable. The respirator kept going throughout the day. This wasn't like the Wraith girl whose weeping only manifested at certain times. The noise was a constant and it was growing louder. Took me a few days to really begin to hear the wheezing and gasping beneath the worrying of the Liberator. I avoided the guest room at all cost. It was quite a simple thing.
There was nothing in there except for the sounds of gasping and wheezing. To be completely honest, I was afraid to enter that room. I could live with seeing the image of the girl in the basement, but I wasn't so sure I could accept seeing the ghost of my grandfather reliving his last moments. I avoided it for a few months before finally succumbing to the curiosity.
It was my senior year then, and I was just wrapping up with graduation parties.
>> Okay, sorry.
Turned it off. I >> I pressed it.
Okay, we're good.
>> You pressed the camera up against your dick and it turned it off.
>> Holy [ __ ] Way to break the momentum.
That was a [ __ ] I was so locked in.
My dick turned it off. Good [ __ ] Lord.
>> Just Just keep breathing. Just keep breathing.
>> I'm only here for a couple days. I'm only here for a couple days.
>> I'm only here for a couple days. I'm only here for a couple days. I get to see my family again. I get to see my family again.
>> There's no place like Cambuza. There's no There's no place like Kambooza.
There's no place like Columbia. There's no place like Columbia. It was my senior year then and I was just wrapping up with graduation parties. I had had quite a bit to drink that night, but was still capable of driving. Pulled into my driveway and a thought struck me. The thought was that I had to see him before I left home for college in a few months.
I had to face the ghost of my grandfather if I wanted to move on with my life.
Own into the house and approached the guest room. I wasn't prepared for what I would see, and I don't think I ever could be.
I stood outside the guest room for a few moments, trying to steal myself for what I would see next. I listened to the methodical worrying of the oxygen tank and the discordant gasps and coughs that broke through the rhythm. The more I listened, the more I found my resolve weakening.
Another couple of minutes, and I knew that I would completely lose the will to investigate. So, I swung open the door and stepped into the room. My eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the darkness.
Curtains had been closed to the moonlight, giving the room a separral feel to it. The room had grown musty and smelled like mothballs in stagnant air.
The wheezing and gasping was louder now.
It's just in my mind now, but when I recall this moment, I could have sworn that the rasping and haggarded sounding breaths were almost deafening.
My eyes adjusted enough to see the shade of something on the bed. Eyes adjusted to the light and I could see him clearly. The spirit or echo my grandfather was on the bed. His body writhed spasmmonically on the sheets. It looked like he was having a seizure or stroke of some sort. His hands clawed at the air in front of his face. This motion looked out of place until I realized that he was probably trying to adjust the respirator on his face. He writhed in the bed for a few more minutes before he fell still. He was dead. The room was silent.
Turned around and left the room. The door closed behind me. Sound of frantic gasping and wheezing started up again.
Man, talk about a nightmare. Just slipping through choking like the respirator falling off forever and ever.
God, >> it's just only happening at his house.
It doesn't seem like any of the clairvoyance happens outside of the house.
Well, these are the only two places.
What are the only two people that died?
Because it's in the place that they died. It's repeated over and over.
>> Well, I just don't know if it's like because people have [ __ ] died everywhere. I just don't know if he's >> realistically he would be walking around and see like [ __ ] too >> like medieval era people like >> or I just mean like you believe in the story so far that he is actually seeing other people outside of this, but we're just hearing about the occasions in the house.
>> No, I think H >> I think this is all he's seen so far.
>> Okay.
>> But realistically, yes. If you walked around anywhere, you would see the remnants of something. Someone killing someone for some reason. Yeah.
>> Car wrecks everywhere. Just every straight corner. YEAH.
>> OH MY GOD.
>> YEAH.
>> The night before heading off to college, I rolled over in my bed and watched the nightly visitor to my bedroom. She rocked slightly in the bed and wept quietly. It tore at me to know that she was doing her best to keep quiet. Who was she hiding her depression from? Why couldn't she ask for help? Why didn't I?
She was tragically young. I leaned over to her and whispered to her, "I'm so sorry this happened to you." Wasn't much else left to say. Went to college the next day.
Devry University Fullale Technology.
>> I'm going to MIT. I'm sorry I can't take you with me.
>> I went to National American University.
>> You want to cry in my bed at MIT?
>> Would you like that?
>> I went to Phoenix online.
>> I went to Dev Fry University.
Time drudged on and my first semester of college was going well. Didn't have any ghostly encounters in that dorm, which was a plus. I don't think I would have managed to focus with the spirit of someone constantly dying from alcohol poisoning and fraud initiations gone wrong. I had friends, but in a sad way, I found myself waking up in the middle of the night, wanting to see, to talk to her, talk at her at least. November rolled around and I decided to drive home, be with the family for Thanksgiving.
I wish I just stayed at college. I arrived the day before Thanksgiving and proceeded to catch up with my parents.
My mom even rushed outside to hug me as I pulled into the driveway. My old man greeted me with a beer and we sat on the deck as I filled him in on my life at college. My first semester wasn't over with yet, but I was already adjusted to life at college. It was one of the happier moments of my life. Reminiscing about it now leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. We had a good dinner and I settled down for bed. I was getting ready to drift off to sleep when I heard the sounds I had become so familiar with when I was a child. I opened my eyes and faced the crying girl. I thought of all the usual platitudes that I used to offer to her.
>> You were too young. You had so many moments ahead of you. You could have been happy.
>> I wanted to tell her all of these things. Something else was on my mind.
The thought was that something wasn't right. It felt like I was overlooking something deathly important.
something that I couldn't make sense of until I saw him one more time. I moved upstairs and went to the guest room. The respirator was still clicking on and off, and he was still gasping out his last minutes in that room. Trevidation filled me. My whole body was screaming at me to turn around, and my mind was begging the same. I knew if I entered that room and witnessed my grandfather's death again, that I would never be the same. I entered the room anyways, and I wish to this very day that I never tried to save that curiosity. He was still on the bed, gasping, clawing, and struggling in his final moments. I moved close to him and sat on the bed. His body writhed and twisted on the sheets.
I knew something was off about all this.
Something in the back of my mind pushed me forward. I leaned in close and watched it all carefully. I watched as my grandfather clawed at the empty air in front of his face. Something was off about all of this. It wasn't Klein at the respirator.
When I realized what it was, I knew I had no other choice.
I went downstairs and grabbed my suitcase. Flight the house.
Oh, that's pretty cool.
You You >> I don't know whether it's happening.
>> His father, it's not his respirator fell off. Someone choked him to death.
>> Oh, you think his someone strangled him?
>> You think his dad strangled him?
>> His dad or his mom? Yeah. Well, maybe the mom.
>> He mentions the dad loved him. Uh, but when he gets home, mom's already changing the sheets.
>> Oh, [ __ ] >> She's emotional. And it talks about how the grandfather would command her all the time.
>> Uh, treat her more like a maid than a daughter-in-law. And then he gets home and she's already cleaned up. So, >> Jesus. Okay.
>> Yeah. So, I think his mom killed her.
That's pretty cool that you're going to put that together from the echo of the death. Yeah.
>> I debated whether or not to wake up my parents and let them know why I was leaving and why I would not return.
Okay. Maybe he hasn't put together. I'm pretty sure it's his mom.
>> I think that why they wouldn't return. I think he knows that. Like, hey, you killed this person. Maybe that's why he's not returning.
>> Well, he says I wouldn't wake them up to let them know.
>> Well, yeah. He's not going to wake them up and be like, "Hey, I know what you did." I think is what he's saying. At least that's how I'm reading it.
>> Okay. I debated whether or not to wake up my parents and let them know why I was leaving and why I would not return.
You can call me a coward, but I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't face them with that knowledge. I threw my suitcase in the trunk of my car and drove to the nearest bar. I never needed to drink more than I did at that very moment. I wanted something to give me the liquid courage to leave Kalamazoo, to leave my family. I was almost in tears by the time I reached the dive bar. I swallowed back my emotions, entered the bar, and sat at the stool closest to the bartender.
It was a dive. The kind of place that had sawdust on the floor to soak up sweat, spills, and skull spit. I wasted no time in getting the bartender's attention. I ordered a double shot of whiskey and down it as soon as the drink was poured. Ordered another and another and another. As midnight rolled around and they were preparing for last call, they decided to perform their night before Thanksgiving tradition. The bartender would go around and ask what everyone was thankful for this season.
give them a free shot at the cheapest liquor they had offer for their response. An old man in the corner said, >> "For health."
>> A young patron who was probably too young to be drinking shouted, >> "YOLO!"
>> I was promptly denied a shot.
A woman around my age declares, >> "For life and its adventures >> down the drink." Spanish couple at a booth declared, "A familia."
>> Continued around the bar until he at last came to me. bartender came around to me and he asked, "What are you most thankful for?"
>> Pause for a moment. I didn't know what to say. Bartender tapped his foot, ready to wrap up last call and finish their night. I had to say something. I couldn't think of anything I was grateful for. It's not in the right headsp space. Only wanted to drink the memory away. He grunted.
>> Come on, buddy. What are you grateful for?
>> Said the first thing that popped into my head.
>> Ed Mortem. God, [ __ ] off.
What a what a [ __ ] dork. I'd be like, and you're not getting a shot. See you later. Hey, see you later. See you later, Deadpole Society.
>> What's at boredom?
>> It's death.
>> To death. Yeah. Yeah.
>> What What are you grateful for? To death. Yeah. I watched the bartender's quizzical expression as I down the shot and ordered another. I'd have ordered another after that one, but in some part deep down inside of me, I knew that I would never erase that image from my mind. The image of my grandfather cliented something in front of his face.
The thought of the pillow over him that my mother had been holding down, smothering him in his sleep. The memory of her disposing of the bed sheets and the pillowcase the day I returned home from school only made me feel worse. I tossed back the shot and left the bar, not knowing what to do next. I felt sick to death.
>> That's a fun tie, too. I like that. I felt sick to death because his grandpa was so sick, too. The uh >> And also sick to death is ad nauseium atmortem.
>> Oh, is it? Oh, there >> sickness to death. Yeah.
>> The uh Yeah, that is that is fun. The uh >> a fun little twist there, too. Yeah. You just expect it to be him clawing and gasping for air with his life like with his ventilating machine, but it's almost a weird uh >> the the mention earlier of like he's clawing in front of his face and you're like, "Oh, I guess that's a choking motion." But realizing it's a pillow, that's pretty cool.
>> Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
>> And it's also I wonder how cathartic it is for the >> It's like all these feelings of just being like the things you wish you could have said or like all the things you wish you could have done. The dad's talking about how abusive he was and all that kind of stuff and it's the mom that ends up killing him. It's kind of It's pretty sick. So >> yeah, I think that's a pretty cool time.
I like the idea of being able, it's very six sense being able to piece together, you know, someone's final moments, what happened to them by >> uh their ghost.
>> Mhm.
Well, >> which speaking of ghost, you know, little Sally down in the basement, she was killed. He's all all her all >> downstairs. They have literally surgical tools being surgical tools. They took out her appendix >> and they have a table. She all >> they're like this is like the table where she died on.
>> What do you think of the What do you think it's an ethical thing to have that kind of stuff >> or does it matter?
>> No. Well, >> cuz it's been so much time. If it was last year that it happened, I think people like that's poor taste. But because it's so long ago, you're like, who gives a [ __ ] I didn't know.
>> That's what I'm saying. Like, is that is that the thought process?
>> I to me the thought process is will their family see it? And I'm not talking about like great grandkids and stuff like that. I'm talking about like well their sisters, their son, their mother, stuff like that.
>> It's such a weird detachment from like a human.
>> It is. It is. But to me, that's like like history for example, right? If you were to have Pompei is a great example where we have all the uh the frozen bodies of Pompei. When you think about how morbid that is. Oh, sure. You know, like if if that happened last year, imagine there's an earthquake this year and then in 2027, there's a museum you can go to of the petrified bodies from the earth.
>> Well, that's what it feels like [ __ ] like I mean I I don't really go on Twitter, but perusing Twitter during like the Ukraine war that feels >> all the videos of people dying on both sides.
>> That feels pretty crazy. All the drone footage and all that kind of [ __ ] >> It's just like here's death, here's death, here's death. And to that to that one, there's even something in my head where it's like, well, you're at war with them, so they're the enemy and stuff like that. Um, so there there is a layer in my brain that detaches it a little bit, but when it comes to like with this house, a child, right, to me, time does heal it enough that you can be terrific. Now, is the way it's presented respectful? No. But I don't think it's pretty. I mean, the whole thing too of like making sure that you know that she was like in total misery and kind I I I don't know how respectful it is.
It feels weird. Yeah. Well, I think feel respectful or does it feel like a horror gimmick for people? What do you guys think?
>> I think Yeah. People want something tangible to make the connection even if they know it's a prop. So, I think that's part of it, too.
>> No. Yeah.
>> It's a museum. It's like the Holocaust Museum.
>> Wouldn't say it's anything really like that.
>> I don't think this All right. Add infinite. Add infinum. Add infinum. Add infinitum.
>> We can keep talking. We can keep reading this. This is the Holocaust Museum. The dolls everywhere.
>> Anytime Nick speaks, it's an assault to someone.
>> Turns off turns off his uh camera with his with his [ __ ] >> and has to publicly tell people to people I feel like would just be like, >> "Oh, oops. Yeah, sorry. Turned off." And he's like, "Yeah, my dick turned it off."
>> You can't stop this guy.
>> It pressed into it.
>> Also, Also, >> also like also you speak about your [ __ ] as if it has its own mind.
>> It pressed into it. I begged it not to.
>> I wouldn't be surprised with him.
>> Oh my god. No. Well, should we finish it off with Ad Infinum?
>> Ad Infinum, the final part. So, we now reached the conclusion, my third act. My exient stage left.
>> God, dude.
>> I feel like this is He's like, you know, I went to I went to college and I didn't have a lot of friends. Well, not really.
It's like, yeah, probably because you're saying [ __ ] like this.
>> Like adm.
>> Yeah. Oh, hey, man. Hey, hey, man.
There's like a kegger having down the road.
Well, at Infinum and you're like, "No, actually, you know what? Actually, we actually just canceled it." So, >> hey, you want to come hang out? Karp DM.
I lied. Actually, I was >> I was going to take off all my clothes and hang myself in my dad's study.
>> Yeah.
SPOILER.
>> YEAH. SPOILERS. SPOIL. SPOILS.
>> He didn't hang. He shot himself.
>> Did he? I thought he hung himself. Wake up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
>> Yeah. Then Red Foreman runs up and he's like, "NO."
>> And then And then there's like an incredibly heartbreaking scene where the mom finds him and he's like, "No, he's okay. He's okay. We'll just grab this.
It's okay." It's like, "Damn."
>> Po Society is a great movie.
>> Yeah.
>> Oh, Captain My See, that's what this [ __ ] guy would do.
>> Oh, Captain My Captain.
>> He'd be like, "Hey, man. Uh me and me and some people are going to go grab some burgers and shakes. You want to come with? Oh, captain. My captain.
Actually, never mind. I'm like totally vegetarian now. So, well, next time think about me. I love I love plants.
>> Vegetarian.
>> Just trying to connect with him. Man, I wish I could still talk and cry next to that crying girl in my bed.
>> Just an insufferable guy through and through.
>> Oh, yeah.
>> In every sense.
>> It's a car. Like someone ran by the window really fast.
>> Did you guys hear like dogs?
>> I did hear that.
>> I heard Well, at first I looked at Harry cuz I heard I could have swore I heard somebody say something.
>> Wait, hold on.
>> Okay, I heard something.
>> Yeah, I heard.
>> That's [ __ ] up that they would do that.
>> That's rude. It's rude to do that. Wait, hold up. I Okay, wait. Hold on, everyone.
>> All right. At infinum.
>> At Infinum. Also too, I will say at the beginning of the story, making the presence of the girl, >> you know, it it has it it's put a different vibe on the house so far for me >> cuz the girl was so innocent and like, you know, cuz when you go into a haunted space, I feel like you're always like, I'm on defense or whatever, >> but now it's like it has a more sympathetic tone, which I should have had.
>> What is that?
>> That was someone banging on the window.
That was someone knocking on the glass.
>> Uh, do you do you want us to check >> go down there? Yeah, check on it.
>> That was someone like >> bring the camera. I'm too scared to go down.
>> Yeah, we would do it, but we're like recording and >> apparently we're trying to finish this out and apparently somebody's like knocking on the door or something.
>> Okay. Oh, yeah. Be careful on the stairs.
>> I'm waiting.
Have a good night. Thank you.
>> Okay, so it was just the Taco Bell order. Thank God.
>> It's probably people just [ __ ] with us probably. Well, it works.
>> Just spent $100 on Taco Bell.
Just hear Harry get shot in the chest.
That would Oh my god. Don't even say that.
>> Yeah. Harry, where is he?
Harry, >> did you take the camera?
>> He's [ __ ] with us.
>> Hold on. Let me go check.
>> Everyone going down one at a time.
>> The door's kind of still open, too. The door's just open. What the [ __ ] He's not He's not outside.
>> Somebody definitely came back in and entered the house, right?
>> He's got to be screwing with us.
>> Well, it could have been the door just squeaking. I don't know.
>> No, that first one was >> The first one was someone doing Yeah.
>> No, I meant >> I don't He might have gone to his car.
He's clearly messing with us. But >> he's clearly messing with us. But that was a knock.
>> Yeah, but from not him. From >> Yeah, it was on the glass downstairs.
Look out that window cuz you can see his car out there, right? Well, don't you go down there.
>> Oh, why they keep leaving the door open?
>> Well, I don't care. Just stay up here.
>> Everyone else is knocking.
What have you thought about the story so far? Have you liked it?
>> Uh, yeah. I like it. Like it so far. I think it's um I'm just waiting for the pop for the balloon to blow up.
Um, yeah. I like it so far. I think it's cool. The idea of this like loner ghost and stuff like that.
We could just keep reading. We could just I don't know. I don't know. I >> might as well.
You find everyone.
What is that? Oh, Taco Bell.
>> There's Door Dash.
>> Oh. Oh, where did you all go?
>> Made me meet him all the way down on the corner. He wouldn't come to the house.
>> What? Who the [ __ ] knocked on the door, though?
>> He knocked He knocked.
>> Oh, he did. And then he Oh, >> he didn't want to be at the house.
>> He didn't want to be at the house.
>> Yeah, he said.
>> All right.
We thought you guys that's very we I I think we both were getting a little >> Well, I thought that you guys were pranking us because Harry goes out and then he never comes back and then you go look and he was like, "Oh, Harry left the door. You don't come back." And then Nick's like, "I have to go downstairs."
>> Yeah. I mean, after a while that that's when I was like those >> like, "All right, there's some prank.
There's going to be some scary thing."
But then I was sitting here like >> they get to knock on the door.
>> The tapping on the window actually [ __ ] me.
Because because it's one thing if all three of you leave and you're pulling a prank. It's another that you got to force up and tap on the glass.
>> Give me a burrito while you eat this.
>> Here, I'll just I can't eat while I'm reading, so I'll just give you the bag.
>> Perfect.
>> You guys want a burrito?
>> Also my god, these are so many I >> One's for Sally, too. I'll take a burrito.
>> Oh yeah. Hey [ __ ] >> Hey, you know what? Pour one out for Sally right now on her carpet.
All right, we're back.
>> Add infinitum. So, we now reached the conclusion. My third act, my exient left stage left.
>> I feel like I should rehash my predicament a little.
>> Ever since I was a teenager, I've been able to see things that no one else can.
>> I I can see certain spirits. I don't know why I can see some and not others. I thank God that I can't see every dead spirit. Otherwise, my world would be full of billions of people that died before my time.
>> There you go. After that, >> I've only seen a handful of ghosts during my life. One being a girl who killed herself in my house. Next being my grandfather who was put out of his suffering by my mother. These ghosts always repeat their last moments at nauseium, admortem. I wish I could say that I managed to bear the burden of what I had learned about my mother. The reality was that I just lost control of everything. Have you guys >> The loudest wrestling.
>> Is there a Diablo saucer?
>> No, I forgot. All right.
>> Is there Diablo saucer?
>> Yeah. Diablo sauce.
>> That is It's It's ironic, but I do get it a lot.
>> I wish I could say that I managed to be off so bad.
This really is like a sleepover when you're eight and you're trying to do something and your friend just keeps doing some BS over in the corner.
>> Damn, dude. This is scary.
>> It's like you're trying to play Xbox and there's that one friend like, "But Monopoly, I'm not playing Xbox till we play around Monopoly."
>> Captain, my captain. That's you right now.
I wish I could say that I managed to bear the burden of what I learned about my mother. The reality was that I just lost control of everything. I began slipping in a downward spiral. I tried to finish up the semester strong, but the mental image of my mother pressing a pillow over my grandfather's face and smothering him to death haunted me. I found that drinking dulled that thought some but did not completely obliterate it. I was self-medicating with some success, but the memory was constantly needling away at my conscience. Which I will add off what he says put him out of his suffering. It's kind of implying that it was a mercy killing. Yeah.
>> Her killing him that way. So maybe >> versus her like hating him.
>> Yeah.
>> For lack of a better term, I became a walking [ __ ] show. I was They love opening that front door. Just walking in and out.
>> Did they order more Door Dash?
>> There's no way. We got pizza, too. I'm What' you say?
>> We got pizza, too. There we go. I like to put the burrito and the Diablo sauce on the pepperoni. It's >> a Mexican cowzone.
[ __ ] Oh, there goes my computer.
[ __ ] >> That's what you get. That's so what you get.
He just poured water all over it.
Oh [ __ ] The Mexican cowzone.
Uhoh. This is not working.
I think we're okay. This is still working.
>> Yeah.
>> Aren't apples pretty good with water resistance?
>> Oh, yeah.
Where my burrito at?
Did they only get one Baja glass to share with five people?
Well, it's my Bob Blast right now. My hunter made me laugh as I was swallowing up my chest is like cramping.
Oh, shut up.
We're in a haunted house right now. This is very scary. That bear keeps leaning towards you.
>> It moved.
>> No, it didn't move.
>> Yes, it did.
>> No, it didn't. Shut up.
>> It was It's leaned forward from where it was earlier.
>> He was like Yeah, he was looking more towards me.
I'm >> He's hing in on Hunter.
>> Editor, >> compare, compare the position. I'm telling you, he's I I saw both his eyes.
I only see one now.
>> Shut up.
I can't take it with the with every time. It's not that good.
>> Oh, it is.
>> It's I've had Taco Bell before. It is not that good.
>> Nick, which one is it?
>> I >> I don't care. I don't care. We're reading a scary story.
>> WE [ __ ] KEEP READING THEM.
>> Crunchy beef burrito.
>> Oh, >> I was drinking whiskey like it was the waters of the river lathe. See, there you go. It's more stupid being. This guy's pissing me off.
The memory was more persistent than the ghosts themselves. That reality haunted me day and night. The image of his final moments were branded into my brain. Can you really blame me for getting smashed every opportunity I got? Maybe I'm writing all of this to find someone sympathetic, who will listen to me. I don't deserve it. Or maybe I'm writing this to reach out to someone who could talk some sense into me and give me the answers I desperately needed. I wish I could say that I dropped out of college when I realized that I wasn't doing anything except drinking. But after another round of failing grades, my college politely informed me that I should not return next semester. I didn't bother appealing the decision. I decided not to return home. I crashed with a friend for a couple of weeks while I tried to figure out what to do next. Couldn't bring myself to go back.
Couldn't face my mom. Slept on my friend's couch and drank like a fish thrown into a tank filled with whiskey.
I managed to live with my friend for a couple of weeks before he kicked my drunk ass out. He had put up with me for too long. He had spent too many nights cleaning up my messes and turning me on my side when I passed out. He was a good guy, but I think the final straw was my late night confession about the ghost. I think he could handle an alcoholic hot message as myself, but throw in my hallucinations and that was just too much. He calmly listened to my drunken ramblings and waited until I passed out before stealing my cell phone from me and calling my parents.
woke up in my bed at home from my blackout. My father was standing in the doorway and my mom was sitting on the bed next to me. She was stroking my hair gently like she used to.
I'm going to be honest.
>> What?
>> Liking Taco Bell is performative.
>> Oh, I disagree.
>> Yeah. No, you can be okay with it, but like people who are like, "Oh, I love Taco Bell. Give me some 2 a.m. Taco Bell." That's performative.
>> Is it? I kind of disagree with that.
Oh, I disagree.
No, I got She whispered to me about how she was here for me and how she was going to get me through this. It's in that moment that I knew that I couldn't confess what I knew about my grandfather's death to my father. She was my mother. She was the one I ran to when I hurt myself as a kid. Maybe it was a mercy that she did to my grandfather. I decided I would try to turn my life around. If only it were that easy. I'm going to let you in on a few fun facts about giving up drinking after over a year of heavy drinking.
First fact being it's not fun. You sweat like you were trapped in a sauna. You have mild tremors.
Out of my peripheral, I can just see him examining the burrito.
Turning it over to You're You're driving me up a wall right now. These different positions you're getting into the burrito.
You're laying on like a bunch of toys that are going to get comfy, dude. I'm sorry.
>> I know. We're in a ghost girl's like sacred altar room. You don't have to be comfy.
You really can't. It was funny. Now it's not funny. Now I'm upset.
Stop turning it over in your hand. You look like the uh guy in American Beauty.
>> Oh, filming the bag.
>> He does kind of look like that kid, doesn't he?
>> Do I?
>> Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, >> cuz you have no emotion on your face.
You're [ __ ] like scaring me, man.
>> I can't read you, man.
You're like, you have no emotion on your face. He's like, I have to investigate.
First fact being, it's not fun. You sweat like you were trapped in a sauna.
You have mild tremors, unless you're a hardcore alcoholic and then you get DTS, delirium trimmings, which are like severe tremors. I luckily didn't have that. But I did have anxiety, which was severely compounded by the realization that while I was there sweating, slightly shaking, and otherwise feeling like [ __ ] in my bed, the ghost girl was right next to me weeping.
After a few minutes of this, she would get up to go hang herself in the boiler room, and I would make a mad dash to the bathroom to throw a bile, try to kick my alcoholism. I really did. I really wanted to move on with my life. I wanted a normal life with stupid, meaningless problems. I just couldn't. I couldn't live in that charal house.
When the girl's weeping wasn't getting to me, the wheezing and groaning of my dying dead grandfather was assaulting my ears. I managed to live at home for a few months before I fled and went up to Grand Rapids, Michigan. It only took a couple of days living by myself with myself before I downed a bottle Johnny Walker. My parents tried to get me to come home, but I couldn't go back to that place. I managed to convince them to let me stay as long as I called them weekly to keep them in the loop. My father even managed to get me a job outside of town. I worked weekdays cleaning animal cages for a pharmaceutical company. It wasn't the most glamorous of jobs, but it paid well enough to support my necessities and me.
Fortunately, drinking heavily had become one of those necessities. I managed to keep my habits under control for a month or so. I would work on the weekday 7 to 5:00 and then while away my weekends and whiskey wash stuper I found some friends along the way some at work and a few of the bars I frequented I was just getting a sense of normaly in my life when everything fell apart. It all started with a phone call.
It was the simplest of things one of my routine calls to my parents. We chatted about the usual things. I caught them up on my work friends and life in general.
I was talking to my mom and she mournfully said, >> "Your grandfather would have been so I have a mouthful."
>> This is incredible. This is really This is an amazing performance honor. Do you want the rest of the Baja?
>> No, I'm okay. Your grandfather would have been 78 today.
>> As soon as those I love your first tip.
your grandfather would have missed.
As soon as those words were uttered, I heard something click and began pumping a familiar sound through the phone.
It was the sound of the Liberator.
Giant.
>> Oh god, dude. Scared the [ __ ] out of me.
>> Ed, you have got to make this watchable.
>> I do not.
It was the sound of the liberator. The giant oxygen tank that my grandfather >> died.
>> Okay. All right. That's better.
>> It died.
>> Trevor, can I get another camera?
>> What?
>> Can I get another camera?
>> Wait, what happened?
>> Just been It's been a hole.
That infinite is is truly testing us right now. Oh god, keep going. The story's good. So good.
>> Yep. What's that?
>> Testing to turn back to get sauce.
>> It's a bunch of Diablo sauce. Really?
>> I got sauce.
>> How'd you get sauce?
>> We just went there.
>> The Taco Bell is that close to Alley House.
>> Surprisingly close.
>> There's also >> That's very kind of you. It's very kind of you. Harry and I found a lot of very creepy old the buildings out around here are we going to get some >> I would I would do anything in my life to finish the story.
>> Are you not enjoying it? I think it's pretty good.
>> No, it's good. I'm just saying like I just want to >> I'm just like I'm so ready for >> I do feel like I'm in an echo right now like looping.
>> I'm in my own I'm in Sally's echo. I think I said, "All right, now add infinite." Six times. I think six times I tried to start. I heard something click and began pumping a familiar sound through the phone. It was the sound of the Liberator, giant oxygen tank that my grandfather owned, which my parents had donated to a nursing home long ago.
Sunday became a terrible thing for me.
It was the day my parents would call.
I'd spend the week dreading the time they would call. I knew it was them before they even spoke. sound of the respirator droning became almost deafening to me. I had asked my mom and dad to speak up when talking to me so I could hear them over the sound of the liberator. They became increasingly concerned over my erratic behavior and eventually invited me home for dinner. I turned them down, lying and saying that I already had plans. I knew that if I stepped foot in that house with that spirit, I would lose it. My mom was silent for a few minutes before telling me she loved me. was getting ready to respond when it began. It was a low, barely audible sound, but I heard it.
When I heard that sound, my weakened resolve shattered apart. I heard the low, pain sound of my grandfather's strained wheezing that was quickly muffled by a pillow pressed over his face. I managed to keep myself in check for a few weeks by relegating my heavy drinking to the weekend. That way, managed to be productive enough to keep myself grounded. Hearing my grandfather's death gasp rattling through my mom's phone was too much for me. I fled to my old vice and let it take over my life. Went out to the nearest bar and drank myself into a stouper. I'm pretty sure I was still drunk when I went into work the next day. My co-workers knew something was going on when I showed up the next day drunk. I even snuck out at lunch to have a couple of pulls from the flask in my car to get through the day. tried to keep myself in a constant state of inebriation because I knew that Sunday was fast approaching and being intoxicated dulled the grim realization.
My co-workers were tight-lipped about it, but I could tell from their disapproving glares that I was wearing thin on their patients. The next Sunday night, the wheezing was so loud that I could barely hear my parents' voices. I made up an excuse, telling them I didn't feel well and hung up shortly after that. I spent the rest of that weekend getting wasted, as if my drinking could ward off their upcoming call and their concern. The situation at work degraded and my friends and co-workers began to distance themselves from me. Sensing that I was about to self-destruct, I developed my own routine for getting through the week. I'd wake up in the morning and wash my mouth out with a bottle of Jack Daniels before going to work. Luckily, I worked in a pretty rural area where my sloppy driving didn't attract a lot of attention and the sky was still dark at 6:00 in the morning. I'd have lunch by myself, take pulls from a flask to steal myself for the rest of the day. I'd become a social pariah at work. After work, I'd visit a bar and have bar food for dinner and a couple of drinks to keep me going through the night. I knew that I was burning through my money I had accumulated while working, but it was a necessity. When I was sober, I questioned what I heard. Was I really hearing my grandfather wheezing and gasping through the phone? Or was it my guilt at knowing that my mom had done my decision not to confront her tormenting me? Was it a mercy killing? or was it desperation? I'll never know. I managed to make it through another Sunday night call, but I'm almost certain they knew something was happening. Maybe I slurred my words, or maybe it was how I spoke, but they knew that I'd fallen off the wagon. It was at this point that I can't really relate what happens next to you, all with reliable accuracy. Forgot a large portion of this time due to my alcohol-induced days. I spent days in such a stuper, I'm still amazed that I wasn't fired. I have little to no recollection of those days that I was constantly chasing that blacked out state. I guess I was still doing a good enough job to warrant pain me, but I'm not sure how. There's only one memory of this binge that I can remember with clarity. I remember turning over my phone and seeing that it was my parents calling me after weeks of radio silence from them. I hung up the phone and continued poisoning my body. The next moment that I can faithfully recall was a sound. A jarring thud snapped me out of my drunken autopilot and sobered me up like a cold shower. My head snapped up and my glazed eyes glanced around. I realized I was driving and had just zoned out. I regained control of the wheel and slowed down the car. I pulled over to call my pounding heart. Having achieved that, I got out to inspect the damage. There was a hellacious dent in the bumper. I examined the areas. as my stomach began to sink. Had I hit something? That thought sobered me up.
There was no blood on the car, so I reasoned that I hadn't hit anything living. The dent was substantial, so it had to be something large. If I had a hazard guess, I would estimate that it was the size of a basketball or larger.
I breathed out a sigh of relief before another thought insinuated itself. What had I hit with my car? I walked a couple hundred yards back, but I didn't see anything. looked for logs, branches, or any type of debris in the road. My search didn't turn anything up. I reasoned it was nothing. And after confirming that it was around 6:00 in the morning and a weekday, I went to work. I didn't have a liquid lunch that day. I didn't have any lunch at all really. My stomach and mind was so upset that I doubted I could hold anything down, even if I wanted to. Finished up washing the animal cages and went home for the day.
Along the way home, I stopped by the side of the desolate rural road and searched the area again. Turned up nothing in my investigation. I went home and sat in my bed. I didn't have anything to drink. I didn't eat either.
I also didn't sleep. What had happened on that road? When did I hit? I recall it was a Saturday. I remember this because I had to check my phone's calendar to find the correct date. Much to my chagrin, I realized that checking my phone to find out what day it was had become a common occurrence for me. I moved to the fridge in a mechanical repetition of my typical morning ritual.
I opened the door, expecting it to be barren, but I saw a carton of eggs and enough food to make breakfast for myself. It was a shame that I still wasn't hungry. It was around this time that I started to get worried about my health. I hadn't eaten anything since yesterday morning. I sat down on my couch where I typically had breakfast and turned on the television.
Dark thoughts began to surface in my brain. My mind flashed back to when I was younger. I was watching the ghostly girl. She would appear almost every night and she was always repeating. She wept for a few minutes before sitting up and going to the boiler room to hang herself.
My grandfather spent his afterlife lying in his bed, coughing and wheezing before my mother went to his room and smothered him in what I can only hope was an act of mercy.
What was I doing if not repeating myself like them?
That's I like that connection a lot that he's so terrified of living in a loop he can't come out of, but he's doing the exact same thing to himself with the drinking, right?
>> Like pushing himself there. He's created his own hell that he's so scared of. I was filled with existential terror.
Horrible thoughts began to fester in my brain. What if I had hit something bigger than a log? Maybe I had struck a tree and gone through my car's windshield. Maybe I was lying on that quiet rural street dying or already dead. Was I doomed to repeat a drunken haze before coming around full circle to the moment of my death? I continued with that terrifying mindset before there was some breaking news and I was saved from that horrible thought and thrown to a much more painful one.
The breaking news was an Amber Alert. Oh no.
>> I figured he hit a kid or something.
>> Oh gosh, dude. Yeah.
>> Oh. A local 9-year-old boy had gone missing. His parents woke up a day ago to find that he was not in his bed. The police didn't have any leads, but they were confident they would turn something up in their search. I watched his tearful mom pleading with everyone through the TV to please return her boy to her. He was only 9 years old. He liked reading, video games, and exploring the woods near their house.
Her eyes weld up with tears, and she repeated, "He's my little explorer.
Please come home to me."
>> For some reason, my stomach coiled up tighter than it had before, and I felt sick.
It seemed like every channel I flipped to, I was looking at that boy's cherabic face.
When it wasn't his picture, it was his mother's weeping and his father's pain expression. I turned off the TV, couldn't watch anymore. I went to the fridge and got a beer, cracked it open, and I just held it to my mouth when I got sick. I emptied my stomach into the sink. Typically, I felt better after getting sick, but this time only felt worse. I went out onto my balcony to get some fresh air. I live in an apartment on the third floor. Every now and then I would go out onto my balcony to have a cigarette. Below me, police and people swarmed the streets like ants in a colony. Were they all looking for the boy? My stomach coiled up even more to the point that it hurt. Even though it was early in the afternoon, I went to bed. I was so exhausted, but I still couldn't get to sleep. I spent hours in my bed turning, writhing, and being unable to make sense of it all. what had happened on that road. It was around 4 in the morning when I decided that I wasn't going to get any sleep until I knew what had happened out there. I needed the cold, hard truth or reassurance. I had to have the certainty. I got in my car and started heading to where I had had my accident.
I wanted to know the truth, even if it was as horrible as I thought it would be. I parked my car on the side of the road. As I walked up and down the road, my memory slowly started to recall bits and pieces. I was driving to work. When I was waiting at stop lightss, I would take a sip from my flask. It was almost like muscle memory. And sometimes I would catch myself trying to drink from an empty flask, even though I knew that I'd finished it off moments earlier. I turned off the city road, was heading towards my work via an old country road through the woods. I remember my head drooping down. I wasn't tired. I just wanted something to get me through the day, to get me through the Sunday night call. My head had just nodded down again and then thud. I must have walked up and down those dismal roads for about 2 hours. The sun was just beginning to peek through the night sky and I didn't have to have to try and explain to any passing cars while I was walking up and down a mile stretch of road looking for god knows what. I decided that my mind was playing tricks on me and it was just a fish coincidence.
I pulled around and headed home. As I was leaving, I thought that I had seen something in my rear view mirror on the road. I ignored it. I got home and reflexively grabbed the remote and aimed it at the television. I didn't depress the button because I knew what was waiting for me on the TV. Managed to make myself a sandwich to eat. Still wasn't feeling hungry, but I forced myself to eat it. As I swallowed down the last bite, I regretted my decision to sandwich in my stomach like lead. I spent the rest of the day wandering aimlessly around my apartment, too anxious to settle down with a book and too nervous to watch television.
Talk to my parents that night, but I was too shell shocked to recall anything from that conversation. Can't even remember if I heard the spirit of my grandfather wheezing and gasping into the phone like a perverted caller. If you had a gun to my head and told me to remember that conversation with my family, I would say that I remember talking about work. I would then question why you would hold a gun to my head for such trivial information. Safe to assume that I didn't sleep at all that night. I rolled out of bed and went about my morning ritual. I forced myself to eat a plate of eggs and a slice of toast. I worked late that night. Most of my time was spent trying to correct the multitude of mistakes I made due to being distracted. It was dark when I drove home. I was just rounding the corner when I saw him emerge from the woods on the other side of the road. I slammed the brakes, but it was too late and he lifted his tiny hands to his face. Blinded by my headlights, he gave a slight cry before being knocked off the road like he had been backhanded by some invisible and vengeful god.
>> A terrible reveal, but at the same time, that would be pretty funny to see. Just the kid getting >> I mean he's like this and he just says >> Yeah. Because there's no car there, but it's the action of being thrown that far. Yeah.
>> So it's just him invisibly like >> Yeah.
>> Yeah. Hunter. Funny.
>> Yeah.
>> That 9-year-old's getting hit by drunk drivers. It's really funny.
>> But I would say the visual.
>> I understand. I pulled off the road and looked up and down the streets. There was no one on the road. I was alone in a sense. I walked to the side of the road and proceeded to climb down the slope. I scanned the darkness for a few minutes before I found him. He was curled up in the al cove of a tree. He was in a fetal position, cradling his fragile, broken body. Stared at his corpse for a few minutes before going home, pouring every single liquor bottle down the drain.
>> It is a little I thought he was going to like call the police, turn himself in. I feel like he's building up to it >> probably. But it is a little funny to be like, you know what, >> I'm getting clean.
>> No more for me.
>> This was a wakeup call.
>> That's the wakeup call >> for sure.
>> Message received. Click.
>> There's this. So, I played Resident Evil 9, right?
>> And uh the the guy through all the Resident Evil games who like started Umbrella, who made the virus, is this guy named Spencer. He's like super most of the games he's like an old dude in a wheelchair who's on life support who's trying to create these viruses so he can find a way to live forever in like a perfect body. And in the series he is directly responsible for the deaths of like a billion people, right? Well, nine comes out and you find this secret video of him where it's like an interview and he adopted like a little girl, like a baby girl he found. He's like, "In some small way, I hope to make up for the deaths I've caused." It's like, >> "No, we're past that."
>> Yeah. It's like, "No, it doesn't. It doesn't do it at all.
>> We're past that.
>> You adopted one living child. The difference >> you'd be pretty cool.
>> I think that doesn't count."
But here, it's like, you know what? I may have hit I may have killed a child with my vehicle. I'm done hitting the bottle. That's for sure. Yeah. After I emptied out every drink I had in my fridge, which took a while, I stood at the sink for a few minutes before breaking down. I thought throwing it all away would make me feel better, but I only felt worse. I can only describe it like this. Imagine that at some point in your life, something somehow gets knocked loose from you and you realize it's missing, but don't know how to fix it. You live with that emptiness for years before realizing that there's a way to numb it. You can pour alcohol into the exposed wound and for a moment it doesn't feel so bad. The world seems monochrome and dull. You don't have to care so much. All that pain, all that ache is gone and you can function, if only for a little bit. Pretty soon, you realize that this is the only way you can reach the state of disassociation.
You keep returning to that found and self-medicating as best you can with what you can until you realize that something's wrong. just doesn't work like it used to. It doesn't dull those thoughts. It doesn't blunt those memories. At first, it numbed everything. But now, now there's a dull throbbing in your head of what you've done and what you failed to do. And it fers. It eats away at you regardless of how much liquor you pour into it until you realize that it's not the liquor that's the problem. It's you. So, you pour everything out thinking that it'd be some revelation, some great boon. But it's not. It only feels like that emptiness inside you has grown. Now there's nothing to anize an anest >> anes an anesthe antheize it.
>> Whatever. There's nothing to [ __ ] uh >> and now there's nothing to numb it.
There's nothing to solve these issues.
You can't piece yourself back together.
Something inside you is broken and you don't know if you'll ever fix it.
Without alcohol, I couldn't find anything to numb that feeling. I considered placing an anonymous call in to end the Amber Alert, bring some form of closure to his parents, but I couldn't do it.
>> Why? Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.
>> I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it.
>> Come on. I I have faith in him.
>> I'm a coward and worse than that. I kept asking myself, >> why me?
>> All right.
>> Yeah, you sure had that.
>> Why me? Why me? The drunk driver that I'm hoping >> I'm the victim here.
I made this terrible moment about me. I pretended like I was the victim here, but I wasn't. Word for word, bar for bar. I asked myself what I'd done wrong to deserve all of this. As if I didn't already know the answer to that. I'm a selfish coward and no amount of drinking will distract me from that. I managed to drift off to sleep that night, but I kept waking up with a scream in my throat and sweat staining the sheets.
5:00 in the morning, I decided to go into work early. I passed the boy on the way into work and on the way home. Each time it was a little more graphic, a little more gut-wrenching. He stepped out into the road. What was he doing out that early? He raised his hands in front of his face to shield his eyes from my headlights. My car struck him and sent him skipping along the asphalt, whirling dervish of broken bones off the road. I wish I could tell you that I did the right thing.
That I called the police or his parents and let them know where the body of their son was, nestled in between the roots of a tree. I couldn't bring myself to do it. I'm a horrible person. I am the lowest of the low. I tried to go about with my life. After a week, the Amber Alert ended and the world moved on. I didn't. The parents didn't. He's on that road every time I drive to work.
I see him stepping out onto the road.
He's there with me when I close my eyes.
I had foolish thoughts of moving away, but his death is going to follow me. It, no, he is going to haunt me. It's a dead albatross tied around my neck. I'll never forget the sound of his startled gasp, the impact of my bumper on his tiny body. Few days after the Amber Alert was cancelled, I returned to that dead road in the middle of the night.
parked my car and watched his spirit living out its last moments of his short life.
I hit him with my car and he skipped along the road and off the side. I walked solemnly behind him. I trailed him as he dragged his broken and bleeding body along the dirt. He reached the tree and curled up in its roots. His body was still there when I returned.
Time and left him withered and putrified.
Can't say how long I stood by his corpse.
doesn't really matter in the long run.
As I stood there in vigil, I knew that this guilt was going to consume me, eat me away inside like a cancer. It was in this moment that I knew that I'd be haunted by this and the others for the rest of my life. I'd be dogged by the overwhelming loneliness at the ghostly girl who claimed my bedroom as her haunt.
I would be stalked by the feeling of hopelessness that consumed my grandfather as he lay in what would be his deathbed and excruciatingly slid towards his demise.
Most of all, I'd be haunted by my murder of that young boy. Fatal mistake was now like a tattoo on my soul. So, we reached the conclusion. My conclusion, the irony is almost palpable. I want nothing more than to die at this very moment. And I am consumed by an overwhelming desire to live.
I know what happens to us when we die. I don't want to live those final moments of my life, my suicide and nauseium. See myself slicing open my wrist, hanging myself for the rest of eternity. Also don't want to experience this guilt and shame for the rest of my miserable life.
I want to embrace the reaper and I want to run screaming from his bony grasp.
These sentiments will follow me at mortem. My mind is constantly waging a war within itself to unload this burden and escape into death and to hold it within me like a dark treasure. Maybe writing this all out will help me achieve some sort of clarity about what I should do next. I doubt it. Although I have to confess in some form or other. I don't know which choice is right or wrong. All I know is that this is hell at Infinitum.
That >> was a fun ending.
>> Yeah, I kind of like that. Actually, he didn't not that I like that he didn't confess, but I think it it makes his character a little more complex.
>> Yeah. Well, it's like he um he was obviously tormented his whole life by seeing these death echoes. Um and that pushes him to drinking, which leads to another death. So I the thing I mentioned I like the theming where he becomes so terrified of death knowing that it's just reliving your final moments over and over that he pushes his life to a point where it's kind of like that death just a misery over and over.
>> It seems like all the echoes ring true with himself too.
>> The little girl getting killed and dying echoes the kid that he the the child that he killed. His mother killing the grandfather is going to echo how he kills himself. And even the grandfather grasping and being sick is like his alcoholism. It's kind of interesting how it all just like comes full circle. And it's like >> he could have learned from all these things, but yet he just decided to like numb himself, which you know, it'd be difficult hearing all those things and having to deal with that. But very uh very interesting. Needless to say, >> I feel like there's another story about a medium or a psychic or whatever that begins to lose their mind because they see dead people.
Um does that sound familiar to you at all?
No, just Six Sense like you were saying.
>> I mean, Six Sense of course, but the Six Sense was interesting because it's from a child's perspective and they don't really understand or grasp, but that one kind of has I mean obviously not with Bruce Willis, but with the child it kind of has a hopeful note at the end of like maybe they can use this for good to help people and you know do things like that and it's like and Bruce Willis is dead, which is the part everyone remembers from the ending. I swear there was a movie I watched where it was about a guy who was like he could see the dead but he was like terrified by them and he pushed him to drinking and stuff like that but I can't remember what it was.
>> I don't know. All I know is the story was great. I thought it was a lot of fun.
>> I really liked it. It was interesting to see how all of them kind of tied up and all like that. He kind of like inter he inter wo >> uh the ad like basically all of the titles uh together in a very fun way where it all felt very cohesive and in a way like I said it just felt uh full circle and a fun moment. So >> yeah, I think um Imperial Invective always has these really cool themes baked into his stories like it's worth in the earth where it was about like someone decaying, you know, falling apart as they crawl deeper into this cave. And here it kind of feels like pushing your being so afraid of the inevitable that you cause it. Right.
>> I I I think >> being afraid of the ocean that you swim out into it.
>> I think uh it I feel like with a lot of his work, which I might be I don't know, but I feel like maybe he has not not that maybe he has a drinking problem.
No, but I think that >> really >> But I I do think that uh I wonder if like any of his substance abuse or if any of that stuff cuz so much of his work is about decaying, numbing. It's about like I mean this this whole story is just literally the ghost that haunt your past that drove him to drink and how that made him create a ghost create his own ghost with his actions.
>> So pretty interesting. And the addiction po like the addiction that he gets from >> like dwelling on this so much pushes him to create more of it both in his own life and the child create another instance of you know death that has to be repeated over and over. So >> it's like he was so paranoid of this eventuality that he creates it.
>> Yeah. Um, yeah, it's a very it is a very and this isn't a negative of the story, but it is an incredibly uh bad what's the word I'm looking for? The opposite of like a hopeful like triumph, the opposite of triumphant. It's a very defeated ending where it's like, yeah, this horrible thing happened to him. Uh, so he made that thing happen and everything got worse. You know, it's a very it's like he the narrative continues to play no one over and over.
No one learned. I mean, it's just it's a byproduct of his actions, for sure.
>> Um I think I think for a story too in the scary uh house, uh it felt fun. Like I I like that it also tied in like just with the setting that we're sitting in, >> the ghost girl on the bed, >> ghost girl, and all that kind of stuff.
I think that it's just it was a fun read for this. And I think that too >> uh it put a very sympathetic uh it put a it puts a very sympathetic twist on the dead. Yeah. Yeah, which is interesting where I think a lot of people use it as a catalyst for, you know, fear and uh things that are trying to attack.
>> And also like the thing I mentioned at the end of the second part where he figures out that his grandfather was killed by his mom because the way it's grabbing. It's almost like the story there is giving him an option. Like the universe is being like, "Look, you could use this for good, right?" Like um I mean, imagine how that could help with investigations or like trying to answer questions about lost loved ones and stuff like that. There's so much he could do with this capability. I don't know if I read it that way either. I I think that it he has such an an unusual and almost unhealthy view of what death is to where >> I guess it is true that he only sees people related to him cuz he mentioned that thing about thank god I don't see everyone.
>> He can't see everybody. And I think that like also I I just I don't think that there's ever it kind of seems interesting of like I don't know if his dad has a similar thing or if it's like the things that are passed down to you, but it seems like his relationship with death and how it embeds like in it instills fear. I think the biggest problem is that he actually never talked to anybody and he like never he never approached it from that angle. He was like very reserved and the thing that he turned to was numbing his problems. And I think that's like ultimately that's that's the that's the lesson learned is that I think he should have been more open. I think that he should have uh tried to understand it versus fear it.
>> I think too there's also like if you pull out the supernatural elements, there's still an existing narrative of someone going through addiction, going through mental turmoil uh and not making it better.
>> Yeah. No, this is a very I would say this is a very realistic understanding of addiction of uh >> the catalyst is just superal.
>> It's easy to also lie to yourself to lie to others and all. I mean like it's but I think the catalyst that makes it a like a fun Sunday with a cherry on top is that there's ghost and that kind of stuff.
>> A lot of the description of like his drinking and like oh that those couple paragraphs about like for a little bit you can operate you don't think about the reality that was giving me wraps of uh uh mother horse eyes with all the stuff with the author there talking about alcoholism and stuff like that.
The uh the scariest part of all this though is door dashing Taco Bell to a haunted house >> and eating a driver won't come to the door and the driver tapping on the door and being like, "Can you meet me down the road to drop off the food?" That actually happened. So, I'm ready. Knocks it and just walks away.
>> I'm ready to get out of this position.
So, until next time, guys. We will see you in the next one. Please watch the next one. We'll be going to recording next in the basement.
>> We're going to be recording in the basement. There's a lot of really big bugs down there, and I can't wait for them to get all in Hunter's hair. So, thank you so much also to our audio listeners who didn't get to see this.
Please check out the visuals this time.
But if you are listening on audio, thank you for listening on Spotify podcast anywhere you can go and giving us nice rating. And also thank you patrons uh for supporting the show and getting an extra episode which we're going to upload like a vlog.
>> We're going to do a vlog and stuff like that for the patrons of us like going around.
>> Yeah. So, it's been a lot of fun. Yeah.
And uh also um >> the way you said like please watch the visuals for this one was >> it's it's just watch audios please just look at me please.
>> It's too good. All right that's it.
Byebye.
>> Byebye. Wait I have to say something. Oh my god my back. I'm going to put crickets in his Taco Bell orers. I don't know.
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