Lot 082 : Flight Path // Home Movie

Today's episode is sponsored by I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Get it now on Digital.

When five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a secret rather than face the consequences.

A year later, their past comes back to haunt them, and they're forced to confront a horrifying truth.

Someone knows what they did last summer and is hell-bent on revenge.

As one by one, the friends are stalked by a killer.

They discover this happened before, so they turn to two survivors of the legendary Southport massacre of 1997 for help.

Starring Madeline Klein, Chase Sue Wonders, Jonah Hauer King with Freddie Prince Jr., and Jennifer Love Hewitt.

I know what you did last summer is a perfect summer slasher, says Jordan Cruciolo of NPR.

Your summer is not over yet.

Don't miss a killer movie night at home.

F equals B.

Ah,

you've returned.

Curious.

Just in time.

Because this lot I just got in for you is something of a

rarity.

Not one item, but two.

Both consigned in the same package, though.

They arrived days apart.

No name,

no return address.

Just two pieces pieces of a puzzle that never quite fit.

Yet somehow, hum the same terrible tune.

We'll begin with this.

A safety card from C27C.

Standard fare, except...

well,

you'll see.

It was found folded into the shape of a paper airplane.

We call this first tale...

Flight Path.

Before we begin, I want to point out out some of the customers whose names have been etched in brass on this beautiful plaque I had made above the front desk.

These are some of the members of the inner circle of the antiquarium.

We go by the Obsidian Covenant.

Recent initiates include Killer Cam 1993,

Ace the Fox, Melissa Robertson, Stacey Thewis,

M.R.,

Richard Boyles,

Tama Hawke,

Joshua Sherwood, and

Tammy Sparveri.

We are ever appreciative of your devotion to the Order.

Go to theObsidiancovenant.com to receive the sacrament.

Now.

Where were we?

Oh yes.

Welcome to the the Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings

and Odd Goings On.

Our plane was ordered into a holding pattern.

That was seventeen hours ago.

I've been working long-haul flights for seven years now.

You pick up patterns.

Passengers complain about turbulence in the first hour, then they get sleepy.

Then the cabin quiets down like a church.

I used to love

the stillness of that middle stretch.

Dark cabin, humming engines, people breathing at sink.

But now?

Now it feels like a graveyard with tray tables.

We were about five hours into the Heathrow, Chicago route when it started.

Everything had been textbook.

Smooth air, full meal service.

Not a single drunken stag due.

I was in the galley boiling water when the captain called us into the crew jump seat area.

The tone in his voice made my stomach go cold.

He said we'd just been ordered into a holding pattern.

No explanation.

Chicago Center told him the ground was experiencing a high security emergency and advised all transatlantic flights to circle until further notice.

We'd all heard that that term before.

Holding pattern.

Normally it means there's congestion on the tarmac, weather delays, some VIP movement, but we weren't even over Illinois yet.

We were still over open water.

The captain's hands were shaking as he spoke.

That

scared me more than anything.

Then, 30 minutes later, our ACARS system lit up again.

Short bursts of text-based information.

Disjointed, garbled, military designators, partial city codes.

LHR, contact lost.

JFK, impact confirmed.

CDG, multiple.

We asked him what impact meant.

He didn't answer.

We knew.

I remember the moment the crew stopped pretending.

We sat in the rear galley, whispering like kids caught doing something wrong.

Beth, one of the seniors, said she used to work NATO liaison flights back in the day.

She said, If the cities were going dark like this,

we wouldn't be going home.

Not tonight.

Not ever.

We weren't told to declare an emergency.

No direction from ground, no safe harbor, no reroute.

Just one final message.

Hold as long as possible.

Await further.

That was ten hours ago.

We're still holding.

The passengers don't know.

Not officially.

The map screens still show us gliding slowly in lazy ovals above the Atlantic.

I turned them off after a woman started crying.

Said we'd pass the same cloud formation three times.

She's not wrong.

We're in a loop.

Not for safety, not for weather.

We're just up here like a paper plane caught in limbo.

A man in 27C tried to FaceTime his wife an hour ago, said the call connected, but all he could hear was sirens and distant screaming.

He just sat there staring at his phone, like if he blinked, it would vanish.

Eventually, he threw up in his seat and hasn't spoken since.

We gave up on the in-flight entertainment after BBC World News flickered for a second.

Just long enough for a presenter to stammer something about London, multiple strikes, Parliament, gone.

Then static.

Followed by an emergency alert.

Outside the window, window, the world is on fire.

We can't see the cities.

Not directly.

But we can see the sky reacting to their deaths.

Dirty orange blooms pulse on the horizon like infected wounds on the clouds, each one smudging the atmosphere with another layer of soot.

The turbulence isn't violent.

It's slow and shuddering, like the sky itself is struggling to stay in one piece.

Ash rides the slipstreams at 30,000 feet, coating the outer glass in streaks that look like fingerprints dragged by the dead.

Every now and then there's a flash, too distant to blind us, but close enough to feel in our teeth.

Just a silent strobe over the curve of the Earth.

Another capital erased.

It's like watching a planet die from the window of a waiting room.

One of the junior crew members, Jay, had a breakdown in the lavatory,

locked himself inside and screamed until his voice gave out.

When we finally got the door open,

he kept asking what country we were flying over.

His face was pale, eyes wild.

Just tell me there's still a country.

I didn't have the heart to lie.

Fuel is the question now.

That's the thing nobody wants to say out loud.

We're not a military aircraft.

We're a 777 with commercial tanks and standard reserves.

The captain stretched it by throttling back and looping through thinner air corridors, but that's a temporary fix.

We've been up here nearly 16 hours.

The math doesn't work anymore.

And here's the thing that keeps me up.

Even when I'm standing,

we don't know where to land.

Every major city has either gone dark or stopped transmitting.

The places that are still online are rejecting contact.

Iceland denied our relay paying.

So did Dublin.

So did Shannon.

So did Madrid.

It's like the whole world went dark and nobody told us.

A kid, maybe six or seven, asked me when we were landing.

He had chocolate on his face and a model airplane in his lap.

I said we'd be on the ground soon.

He smiled and said, I hope it's sunny.

I walked into the crew storage and cried so hard I bit my tongue to keep quiet.

Beth thinks we're the safest people alive.

We're 35,000 feet above a mass grave, she said.

If that's not safe, I don't know what is.

But even she's looking gone now.

She caught the captain staring at a printed map of Europe with three red X's drawn on it.

No city names, just marks.

That's when she took off her watch and stopped checking the time.

People are starting to notice the silence.

Not the kind you get on a red-eye flight, but the unnatural kind.

No radio chatter, no ATC.

No other aircraft visible, not even contrails.

One man stood up and said he hadn't seen a single plane cross our flight path in hours.

That's not normal on a transatlantic route.

Not even during COVID.

The skies should be littered with crossings.

But it's just us.

A metal ghost gliding above the world, kept in the air by old schedules and the assumption that someone, somewhere, is still listening.

Some of the crew want to to tell the passengers the truth.

Others say that would be a death sentence.

That panic would do what the blasts haven't.

I don't know where I stand.

Maybe they deserve to know.

Or maybe the kid with the chocolate on his face deserves 10 more minutes of believing in a sunny landing.

Maybe that's mercy.

The intercom just chirped.

It wasn't the captain.

It was a voice I didn't recognize.

A woman.

Calm, American accent.

Like a call center operator.

Flight 389, you are currently designated Condition Echo.

Maintain altitude.

Do not attempt contact.

All international emergency protocols are suspended.

Then, silence.

Beth thinks conditioned echo means exposure.

Not radiation.

Knowledge.

That we know too much.

That we're witnesses to the fallout.

Literally.

The people below can hide in bunkers or burn in cities.

We're proof that someone survived.

Someone saw it happen from above.

Maybe that's why no one's answering.

The captain made an announcement.

Not a real one.

He called the crew back and closed the curtain.

His voice was quiet, eyes red.

He said we had fuel for maybe another hour, max.

That he'd sent out a May Day, no response.

That even military frequencies were silent now.

He said the plane had a last-ditch ditching protocol, but that was not ideal over open water.

Which I think was pilot's peak for we're screwed.

Then he said the quiet part out loud.

I think

we're the last people alive.

No one spoke for a long time after that.

30 minutes ago, the captain changed course.

He didn't say where to, just adjusted heading and dropped altitude slightly.

The plane banked slowly southward.

Over the PA, he told passengers we were preparing for a descent.

But didn't give a destination.

Just said that we'd be landing shortly.

It started in whispers.

Tight, frantic murmurs passed between rows like static.

Eyes flicking to phones that no longer connected.

Maps that no longer updated.

Then

someone stood up and demanded answers.

And when none came, the cabin cracked.

A woman screamed at the emergency exit like it was a doorway to salvation.

A man tried to call his wife and sobbed into the seat back when he heard nothing but silence.

The air felt thinner, heavier, like fear was eating the oxygen.

Children cried without understanding why.

Grown men argued over whether the lights meant we were landing or crashing.

No one listened to the crew anymore.

Seatbelt signs blinked uselessly above heads that no longer stayed seated.

It wasn't chaos.

It was collapse.

A slow, creeping unraveling as everyone realized one by one that we weren't going home.

Some people held hands.

Some cried.

The man in 27C started singing under his breath.

I stood at the galley, looked at the sky, and waited for

anything.

A coastline, a port, a flare, a voice.

But there was nothing.

Just water.

We're still descending.

Low now.

Too low.

Engines throttled back so far they're whispering.

The sea looks like glass.

I don't think there's a runway down there.

I don't think there's anything down there.

If anyone finds his phone, if anyone finds me,

we were Flight 389, London to Chicago, departed 406 UTC.

The crew did everything they could.

We kept them warm.

We fed the children.

We handed out warm towels.

We kept the coffee hot.

We lied like saints.

Not because we wanted to,

but because hope

was all we had left to serve.

We're descending now.

Lights flickering.

Still, nowhere to look.

Strange, isn't it?

The card, yes.

It looks ordinary enough at first.

But if you study the illustrations closely, you'll see the passengers are no longer bracing for impact.

They're sinking.

Slowly.

Eyes open.

Like they've made peace with something they were never meant to understand.

On the back, in faded blue ink, a single line.

We're still descending.

Fascinated by what that means, aren't you?

Yes.

Well,

best to take a breath.

Compose yourself.

There's more to come.

Give me a moment, however.

I need to check the store security tape.

The machine has been making strange noises again.

That next item doesn't like to wait.

Today's episode is sponsored by I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Get it now on digital.

When five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a secret rather than face the consequences.

A year later, their past comes back to haunt them, and they're forced to confront a horrifying truth.

Someone knows what they did last summer and is hell-bent on revenge.

As one by one, the friends are stalked by a killer.

They discover this happened before, so they turn to two survivors of the legendary Southport massacre of 1997 for help.

Starring Madeline Klein, Chase Sue Wonders, Jonah Howard King with Freddie Prince Jr.

and Jennifer Love Hewitt.

I know what you did last summer is a perfect summer slasher, says Jordan Crucciolo of NPR.

Your summer is not over yet.

Don't miss a killer movie night at home.

Back again.

The card has been cataloged.

The tray tables are in their full upright position.

And now,

this.

A VHS tape.

Melted in places, warped in others.

The label was clearly an afterthought.

Two words scratched in shaky shopping.

Birthday.

Party.

It was found jammed inside a long-defunct restoration machine at one of those places where people brought old tapes to be cleaned, digitized,

preserved.

Sometimes we ask what people hope to remember.

Other times,

we ask what they were trying to forget.

This next story is called

Home Movie.

I was asked to restore a home video.

It's ruining my life.

I work as a freelancer, digitizing and repairing old media.

It's a nice living.

Get a lot of business from fellow millennials, extracting memories from damaged VHSs, rolls of film, floppy disks, and SD cards.

I've always liked my work.

That is,

until...

Marcy

called me.

Now, of course, with everything that has happened, I doubt that's even her real name.

Hey, be kind, rewind.

What can I do for you?

Anyway.

Yeah, it sounds great.

Drop it on by.

Marcy

claimed that she had a daughter who was turning 20 in a few days.

As a birthday gift, she wanted to restore a home video of her sixth birthday party.

She'd paid double my usual rate to get it done on time.

I agreed.

She came by and dropped it off outside my door in a little brown paper bag.

I thought that was kind of odd.

Wasn't she worried I might not see it or did it get rained on?

Or was she in such a hurry that she couldn't knock and hand it to me in person?

But I didn't think too much of it.

I brought it inside and opened it up.

The VHS tape looked more damaged than what I was used to.

It was one of those mini ones like you'd stick in a handheld camcorder.

The plasticky ribbon that held the actual video was a little crinkled, but I could probably smooth it out.

More concerning were the black smudges all over the VHS

and the corners that appeared melted

as if the cassette had been in some sort of fire.

Someone had scrawled across the label

birthday party.

No name, no date, just

birthday party.

I wondered how Marcy knew it was the correct birthday party tape at all.

Well,

let's see if you work.

I pressed rewind.

It made a sad thrumming noise.

A little bit of a screech to it.

Like the wheels were off-center.

I frowned.

The VHS was probably too damaged to fully digitize.

It's fucking too bad.

I'd already been dreaming about the magic the gathering cards I was going to buy with my earnings.

I pressed play.

The image was staticky snow for a second.

Then a kitchen appeared.

It was clearly all decked out for a kid's birthday.

A pennant-style banner hung from the sliding glass door.

A cake sat on the table, with six six unlit candles stuck in the frosting.

A dozen play settings with pink paper plates and cutlery decorated the table.

Several purple balloons drifted back and forth, tied to one of the chairs.

But there were no people.

No kids.

No adults.

Nothing.

I guess they wanted to take a video of the place I'll decorate before the kids arrived.

The camera shook as the person took took a few steps back from the table.

I sat there, admiring the scene.

But there was something on the floor.

I leaned in towards the crappy old TV, squinting.

What was that?

Then,

then, the camcorder started to pan around the room.

I froze.

There was someone lying on the floor.

No.

Multiple people.

A woman with flowing dark hair.

Arms splayed out at her sides.

A little girl in pigtails.

A balding dad.

A little boy wearing a pointy birthday hat.

All of them

lying face down

on the floor.

My entire body began shaking.

What the fuck?

What the fuck is this?

The camera slowly panned over the room.

Like the person holding it was calm.

Collected.

Like they were calmly recording evidence.

It was at least eight moms and dads.

All lying face down on the beige kitchen tile next to their children.

And it was so...

unnatural.

There was no blood.

No people twisted in horrible positions of terror or pain.

There was no evidence that they'd been murdered at all or even that they were dead.

All of the bodies were pointed towards the kitchen table.

Like someone positioned them, I thought,

my stomach twisting.

Oh God.

I grabbed my phone and began to dial 911.

But from the beige refrigerator, the gingham curtains,

the corded house phone and the video.

This has been taken in the 80s or 90s.

This happened a long time ago.

And the victims lying on the floor were long gone.

A click jolted me back to the screen.

The person behind the camera was holding a lighter.

They lit each candle and then took a step back.

The six flames danced and wavered.

Then the footage shittered, warped,

and turned into staticky snow.

I dialed 911.

But it was pretty uneventful.

The officer didn't help much.

He questioned me on what I did that day, what Marcy sounded like.

Then he took the footage.

I left early, too shaken up to continue working.

As soon as I got home, I did all kinds of searches.

Birthday party massacre, 80s, 90s.

Families dead at birthday party.

I even did a reverse phone number lookup for Marcy.

All dead ends.

Against my better judgment, I recorded part of it on my phone to show my wife.

She always accused me of exaggerating things and being a little bit of a hypochondriac, so I wanted to show her this was serious.

When she saw it, her face dropped.

That is seriously fucked up.

I called the police station later that night, but the officer didn't seem to be taking it that seriously.

It's probably a prank video.

There's not even enough evidence that they're even deceased.

So that was that.

I triple-checked the locks and hugged my daughter extra tight that night.

She was around the same age, almost seven.

And I kept picturing her as one of those kids, face down on the beige tile floor.

I thought I'd have trouble sleeping, but I guess I tied myself out.

Oh, fuck.

Fuck was that

the fuck,

Darlene,

babe,

Darlene, where the fuck are you?

After checking on our daughter, I walked down the stairs.

Darlene,

are you fucking down here?

Golden light spilled out from the kitchen.

One hand on the phone in my pocket.

The wood creaked under my weight.

I held my breath.

Darlene was lying face down

on the kitchen floor.

Her arms were sprawled out at her sides,

her brown hair cascading down her shoulders and onto the floor, covering her face.

Darlene!

I screamed, running towards her.

She was unresponsive.

The paramedics came.

We rushed to the hospital.

She was alive, but in a coma.

The doctor thought she must have fallen and hit her head.

That was their theory.

But I know better.

When I finally got home later that afternoon, I found a brown paper bag on my doorstep.

Inside was a single mini VHS

singed at the edges.

In the same looping handwriting, it read

anniversary party.

X L I C W

G V E X G L I H T V E C I V W M R X S X L I A E P P W

Thank you for your patronage.

Hope you enjoyed your new relic as much as I've enjoyed passing along its sordid history.

It does come with our usual warning, however.

Absolutely no refunds, no exchanges, and we won't be held liable for anything that may or may not occur while the object is in your possession.

If you've got an artifact with mysterious properties, perhaps it's accompanied by a history of bizarre and disturbing circumstances.

Maybe you'd be interested in dropping it and its story by the shop to share with other customers.

Please reach out to antiquariumshop at gmail.com.

A member of our team will be in touch.

Till next time, we'll be waiting for you whenever you close your eyes

in the space between sleep and dream.

During regular business hours, of course, or by appointment.

Only for you,

our

best customer.

You have a good night now.

The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings.

Lot 082.

Our plane was ordered into a holding pattern.

That was 17 hours ago.

Written by Bill the Frog, featuring Conan Freeman as the flight attendant.

Additional voices by Jade Shand, Trevor Shand, DeQuintero, and Jay Hicks.

I was asked to restore a home video.

It's ruining my life.

Written by Blair Daniels, narrated by Trevor Shand.

Additional voices by DeQuintero and Jay Hicks, featuring Stephen Knowles as the antique dealer.

Engineering production and sound design by Trevor Shand.

Theme music by the Newton Brothers.

Additional music by COAG and Vivek Abishek.

The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings is created and curated by Trevor and Lauren Shand.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Antiquarium Pod.

Call the Antiquarium at 646-481-7197.

Hello, and welcome to the world of Scare You to Sleep.

I'm your host, Shelby Novak, a show for those of us who need something a little stronger than counting sheep, who find horror to be a strangely relaxing escape.

Here you'll find a myriad of fright-filled tales, from fictional to true stories, to high strangeness to guided nightmares, where I take you on a journey through your own personal nightmare.

So come get lost in the terror with me.

Listen to Scare You to Sleep, wherever you listen to podcasts, sweet screams.