Lot 069 : My Family Has A Gruesome History..I Know I Will Be Next

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.

And leave your troubles at the door, as they say.

Perhaps I can interest you in some new ones.

The holidays could be such a busy time, can't they?

But here, within these walls, the din of the world has a way of fading away.

Replaced by the whispers of history and the secrets of

forgotten things.

Now you.

You have come at a most opportune moment.

The shop is particularly lively this season.

Relics that seem to hum with an energy all their own.

As if eager to be noticed.

Curious, isn't it?

Perhaps the veil between the past and present grows thinner this time of year, like frost melting on a window pane.

But I digress.

Let me show you something truly seasonal.

It's not tinsel or garland, but rather a book.

A genealogy, to be exact, a family's history, painstakingly recorded in ink and vellum.

But of course, this is no ordinary record.

No, no.

This tome charts a lineage darkened by death.

Do you dare to peer inside its pages?

To trace the branches of a tree where every root is entwined with shadow and every leaf bears the weight of a curse?

Be warned, for once this book's secrets are revealed, they can't be unknown.

Come closer now for this one called...

My family has a gruesome history.

I know I will be next.

Before we begin, I want to point 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 Senior Sack,

Manuel Medrano, Corinne Congdon, Najee P,

Caitlin Johnson,

Gina Smart, Rachel Powell, Oliver Zombie,

and D is for Devil.

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 antiquarium of sinister happenings

and odd goings on.

My family has a gruesome history.

I know I will be next.

The genealogy book sits heavy in my hands, its leather binding cracked and brittle, smelling of dust and something else.

Something

older.

Something that reminds me of dried blood and forgotten screams.

My fingers trace the faded names, each one a testament to a legacy I never asked for but can never escape.

My name.

is Ezra Pierce.

I

am the last.

The morning light filters through the curtains of our modest suburban home,

casting long shadows across the worn hardwood floors.

Lilith is in the kitchen, her pregnant belly a gentle curve against her pale blue nightgown.

She's humming something.

A lullaby, perhaps.

Completely unaware of the weight of history that pulses through my veins.

I should have told her before we were married, before we conceived our child, but

how do you explain a hereditary nightmare that defies rational explanation?

My father, Nathaniel, never spoke directly about the curse.

Neither did his father, Jeremiah, or his father before him.

It was always in hushed whispers, in sideways glances,

in the way older relatives would grow silent when certain names were mentioned.

The Pierce family tree was less a record of lineage and more

a chronicle of horror.

Each generation lost someone, always in ways that made local newspapers fall silent.

that made police investigations mysteriously go cold, that made even hardened investigators look away and shake their heads.

My great-grandfather, Elias Pierce, was found dismembered in a locked barn.

Every single bone meticulously separated and arranged in a perfect geometric pattern.

No tools were ever found.

No explanation ever given.

My grandfather, Magnus Pierce, disappeared entirely during a family camping trip.

Search parties found nothing.

Not a strand of hair, not a scrap of clothing.

Just a small patch of ground where something had clearly happened.

The earth scorched in a perfect circle as though something had burned so intensely that it consumed everything around it, leaving only a memory of heat.

My father, Nathaniel, he was discovered in our family's basement.

His body contorted into an impossible position.

Eyes wide open but completely white.

No pupils, no iris, just blank, milky surfaces that seem to reflect something from another world.

And now, here I am,

the last pierce,

with a wife who doesn't know,

with a child growing inside her.

Unaware of the genetic lottery they've already been entered into.

The genealogy book falls open to a page I've memorized a thousand times.

A loose photograph slips out.

A family portrait from 1923.

My ancestors stare back,

their faces rigid and unsmiling.

But if you look closely, and I have countless times,

there's something else in their eyes.

A knowledge.

A terrible, suffocating knowledge.

Wilith announces from the other room that breakfast is ready.

I close the book.

The eggs grow cold on my plate.

She watches me, her green eyes searching.

A furrow of concern creasing her forehead.

She knows something's wrong.

She's always known how to read the subtle tremors in my silence.

You're thinking about your family again.

I force a smile.

Just

tired.

But tired isn't the word.

Haunted.

Terrified.

Trapped.

My fingers unconsciously trace a small birthmark on the inside of my wrist.

A strange, intricate pattern that looks less like a natural mark and more like a symbol.

A symbol I've never been able to identify.

despite years of research.

It's been in every Pierce Males family photo, always in the same location, always identical.

Lilith's pregnancy is now in her seventh month.

The baby moves constantly, pressing against her skin like something desperate to escape.

Sometimes, in the quiet moments before dawn, I've watched those movements and wondered if it's trying to escape something more than the confines of her womb.

The genealogy book remains open on the kitchen counter.

I catch Lilith glancing at it, her curiosity barely contained.

She knows I'm secretive about my family history.

Most of my relatives are dead or disappeared, and the few photographs that remain are locked away in a fireproof safe in my study.

My hand freezes midway to my coffee mug.

Tell me about your great-grandfather.

There's nothing to tell.

But that's a lie.

There's everything to tell.

Elias Pierce, the first documented instance of our family's

peculiarity.

He was a cartographer, always traveling to remote locations, mapping territories no one had ever charted.

His journals, the few that survived, spoke of places that didn't exist on any official map.

Places with geometries that didn't make sense.

landscapes that seemed to breathe.

The last entry, dated December 17th, 1889, was a series of increasingly frantic sketches, impossible architectural designs, symbols that hurt your eyes if you looked at them too long.

And at the bottom, in handwriting that grew more erratic with each line,

they are watching.

They have always been watching.

The map is not the territory.

The territory is alive.

Those were his final words.

When they found him in that locked barn, his body systematically dismantled like a complex mechanical puzzle.

The local sheriff's report read like a fever dream.

Bones arranged in perfect mathematical precision.

No blood.

No signs of struggle.

Just

reorganization.

Wilvis' hand touches my arm, pulling me back to the present.

Ezra?

Are you listening?

I realize I've been staring into nothing, my coffee growing cold, the birthmark on my wrist suddenly feeling hot,

burning, even.

Oh,

I'm fine.

I lie.

But the curse is never fine.

The curse is always waiting.

And our child is coming soon.

The ultrasound images are wrong.

Not obviously so, not in a way that would alarm a typical doctor or technician.

But I see it.

The subtle

asymmetries.

The impossible angles.

Lilith keeps the images pinned to our refrigerator.

A proud mother-to-be displaying her first glimpses of our unborn child.

Each time I look, I feel something something crawl beneath my skin.

Something ancient.

Something

watching.

Dr.

Helena Reyes is our obstetrician.

She's been nothing but professional.

But I've caught her looking at me.

Not at Lilith.

At me.

Her eyes hold a recognition that makes my blood run cold.

Everything is progressing

normally,

she said during our last appointment.

The pause before normally hanging in the air like a barely concealed lie.

That night, I pulled out the old family documents again, tucked between brittle pages of the genealogy book.

I found a letter.

The paper was so old it crumbled at the edges.

but the ink remained sharp.

Written by my grandfather Magnus.

Addressed to no one and everyone.

The child always comes.

The child has always been coming.

We are merely vassals.

Carriers.

The lineage demands its continuation.

What lineage?

Continuation of what?

Lilith sleeps beside me, her breathing deep and even.

Her belly rises and falls.

The shape beneath her nightgown moving in ways that feel

calculated, deliberate.

I trace my birthmark again.

Under the moonlight streaming through our bedroom window, it looks less like a birthmark and more like a map.

A map to nowhere

or everywhere.

My father Nathaniel's final photographs are stored in a locked drawer in my study.

I rarely look at them, but tonight, it feels different.

Something is pulling me toward them,

calling me.

The photographs are strange,

not because of what they show,

but because of what they don't show.

In each family portrait going back generations,

there's a consistent emptiness.

The space.

Always in the same location.

As if something has been deliberately erased.

Removed.

But removed before the photograph was even taken.

The baby kicks.

Hard.

So hard that Lilith doesn't wake up, but I see her stomach distort.

A shape pressing outward,

not like a normal fetal movement,

more like something trying to push its way out,

something trying to escape,

or something trying to enter.

My apologies.

It seems we have a visitor.

Just a moment while I attend to what needs tending to,

and I'll be right back.

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.

Why, hello there.

You've reached the antiquarium.

If you wish to leave a message, please do so with the town and have a great day.

Hi, um,

yeah, this is this is about those candles I got from your shop.

I need somebody to call me back.

It's it's weird.

They they won't light.

I've tried everything, and here's the thing.

I brought them with me to my girlfriend's grandma's place, kind of out in the middle of nowhere, Bakersgap, Tennessee, the Appalachians.

And they won't go in our house.

Every time I try to walk in the front door with them, they just fall, like they shoot out of my hands and roll right off the porch.

And at night,

it's like someone out in the woods is holding

like

black and red, same candles, but they won't light for me.

And the laughing

doesn't stop.

Every night I hear laughing in the woods.

Deep,

low,

almost not human.

I can't bring them back.

I'm stuck here.

Someone else is lighting them, but I don't know what to do.

Someone please

call me back.

Please.

End of messages.

Nothing to worry about, old friend.

Just a curious passerby looking for a trinket to gift.

Something harmless.

A bauble to be wrapped in cheerful paper and forgotten by New Year's Day.

But not you.

No.

You've come for something more enduring, haven't you?

Something that lies much more...

in the darkness.

Now,

where were we?

Not like a normal fetal movement.

More like something trying to push its way out.

Something trying to escape.

Or something trying to enter.

I close my eyes, but I can still see the map.

The territory.

The birthmark burning like a brand.

Our child is coming.

And I am terrified of what will arrive.

The old courthouse records sit spread across my desk, a constellation of pain mapped out in faded ink and brittle paper.

I've been researching our family history for weeks now, driven by something more than curiosity, something closer to survival.

Every pierce male in the last five generations died or disappeared before their 35th birthday.

Not a coincidence.

Not anymore.

My father, Nathaniel, gone at 34.

My grandfather, Magnus, vanished at 33.

Great-grandfather Elias, found mutilated at 35.

The pattern is too precise to be random.

I've collected newspaper clippings, court documents, medical records.

Not the dramatic, sensational evidence one might expect, but the quiet, bureaucratic trail of destruction

police reports with missing pages coroner's files with critical information redacted insurance claims that never quite add up

lilith finds me here most nights surrounded by these documents she doesn't ask questions anymore just brings me coffee watches me with those green eyes that seem to hold more understanding than she lets on.

The baby's room is almost ready.

Placing a mug beside me,

I look up.

The nursery door stands open.

Pale yellow walls, carefully selected furniture.

Everything perfect.

Too perfect.

Have you ever wondered why some families seem marked by tragedy?

She sits down, her pregnancy making the movement careful, calculated.

Some people are just unlucky.

But I know it's more than luck.

Something runs in our blood.

Something that doesn't care about love or hope or the carefully constructed life we've built.

The birthmark of my wrist throbs.

Not painfully, just

present.

A constant reminder.

I pull out the most disturbing document.

A psychological evaluation of my grandfather Magnus.

Conducted two months before his disappearance.

The psychiatrist's notes are clinical, detached.

It reads as follows.

Patient exhibits extreme paranoia regarding familial curse.

Demonstrates intricate delusion of systematic family destruction.

Fixates on biological determinism.

Shows no sign of schizophrenia, but persistent ideation of inherited trauma suggests deep-seated psychological mechanisms at play.

Inherited trauma.

The words echo.

What if our family's destruction wasn't supernatural?

What if it was something more

insidious?

A genetic predisposition to self-destruction.

A psychological pattern so deeply ingrained that each generation unconsciously recreates the same narrative of loss.

Lilith's hand touches my shoulder.

Coming to bed?

I nod, but my mind is elsewhere.

Calculating.

The baby is due in six weeks.

I have six weeks to understand what's happening to our family.

Six weeks to break a cycle that has consumed generations.

Six weeks to save our child.

If I can.

The research consumes me.

I've taken a leave of absence from work.

My entire study transformed into a makeshift investigation center.

Genetic reports, psychiatric evaluations, family medical histories stretching back over a century.

Each document another piece of a horrifying puzzle.

Dr.

Helena Reyes agrees to meet me privately.

She's a geneticist specializing in inherited psychological disorders.

Recommended by a colleague who knew something was...

unusual about my family history.

Her office is sterile, meticulously organized.

Nothing like the chaotic landscape of my own research.

The Pierce family presents a fascinating case study, she says, sliding a manila folder across her desk.

Generational patterns of self-destructive behavior, early mortality, and what appears to be a

consistent psychological profile.

I lean forward.

What profile?

She hesitates, professional detachment wavering for just a moment.

Extreme risk-taking behavior, persistent paranoia, a documented inability to form long-term emotional connections.

Each generation seems to unconsciously recreate traumatic family dynamics.

My grandfather, Magnus, my father, Nathaniel.

Their lives were a series of broken relationships, isolated existences, careers marked by sudden, inexplicable failures.

And me.

I'd fought against that pattern.

Married Lilith.

Built a stable life.

Or so I thought.

There's

something else.

We've identified a rare genetic mutation.

Not something that causes a specific disease, but a variation that affects neural pathways related to threat perception and stress response.

She shows me a complex genetic map.

Chromosomal variations highlighted in clinical blue.

In simplest terms, your family's brain chemistry is fundamentally different.

You're neurologically primed for a perpetual state of threat detection.

Imagine living with the constant sensation that something terrible is about to happen every single moment.

I know that feeling intimately.

Lilith is eight and a half months pregnant now.

The baby could come any day.

And all I can think about is the pattern.

The curse.

The genetic inheritance that seems to hunt my family like a predator.

That night, I dream.

Not of monsters or supernatural entities, but of a simple, terrifying truth.

What if the real horror is inside us, coated into our very DNA?

What if our child is already marked?

The contraction started at 3.17 a.m.

Lilith's grip on my hand was vice-like, her breathing controlled despite the pain.

The hospital room felt smaller with each passing minute, the white walls seeming to close in.

Dr.

Reyes was there.

Not our usual obstetrician, but the geneticist who'd been studying our case.

Her presence felt deliberate, calculated.

Everything is progressing normally.

The same phrase she'd used before.

But nothing about our family had ever been normal.

Hours passed.

The rhythmic beep of monitors, the soft rustle of medical equipment.

My mind kept circling back to the research, the genetic markers, the documented family history of destruction.

At 11:42 a.m., our son was born.

A healthy cry pierced the sterile hospital air.

Normal.

Perfectly, wonderfully normal.

Dr.

Reyes ran her standard tests.

Blood work, genetic screening.

I watched.

My entire body tensed, waiting for some sign of the curse that had haunted my family for generations.

Nothing.

Weeks turned into months.

Our son Gabriel grew strong, healthy.

No signs signs of the psychological fractures that had destroyed my father, my grandfather, our ancestors.

No mysterious disappearances.

No unexplained tragedies.

I submitted every piece of medical documentation to Dr.

Reyes.

Comprehensive reports, psychological evaluations, each document a testament.

to Gabriel's complete normalcy.

The genetic markers, I asked during one of our final consultations.

The predisposition to self-destruction.

She looked tired.

Professional.

Sometimes.

Sometimes breaking a cycle is possible.

Not through supernatural intervention, but through understanding, through choice.

Lilith found me one night.

surrounded by the old family documents.

The genealogy book, the newspaper clippings, the medical records that had consumed me for so long.

Are you ready?

I understood what she meant.

That night, I built a fire in our backyard, watched the papers curl and burn,

the history of destruction, the weight of inherited trauma, turning to ash.

Gabriel played nearby, laughing,

innocent, unaware of the darkness I was burning away.

For the first time in generations,

a pierce male would live.

Truly live.

The curse

was over.

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, Lod 069.

My family has a gruesome history.

I know I will be next.

Written by Society's Menace CC, starring Trevor Shand as Ezra, Romy Evans as Lilith, DeQuintero as Dr.

Helena Reyes, 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 AntiquariumPod.

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.