S23 Ep2: NoSleep Podcast S23E02

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I want you to be safe out there during the summer months.

I know many of you enjoy camping in the region.

Don't forget, you have to take precautions out there when camping.

I'm sure you're well aware of the many forest cryptids we contend with each season.

But Ricky M just texted me to say there have been sightings again of the squonk.

And yes, the squonk is a shy creature who's ashamed of his ill-fitting, blemish-coated skin.

Hell, you'll probably encounter him crying over his ugly appearance.

He might seem harmless enough, but you'd do best to avoid him.

Let him deal with his own suffering in peace, okay?

We don't want to start getting a reputation for campers who interact with the creatures in the forest.

We'll leave that stuff to those people upstate who spend time in Goat Valley.

So just follow our cryptid rules.

Don't approach them, don't startle them, and don't be their next victim.

Now, back to our regular segment here on the darkness of the night.

An episode of the No Sleep Podcast.

A rustle of the leaves.

A fleeting movement at the edge of your vision.

How often have you walked a forest trail at dusk, only to feel the unmistakable sensation that something unseen is watching you?

For centuries, humans have populated the darkness with creatures of legend whose existence remains unproven, yet whose presence is undeniable in the whispered tales of those who dare venture too deep into the wild of the wild.

Brace yourself for the No Sleep Podcast.

Welcome to the No Sleep Podcast.

I'm your host, David Cummings.

Now Now that we've settled into season 23, we're excited to think about all the chilling tales we have for you in the coming months.

This season will include our Halloween festivities and end right around Christmas.

Holiday horror shall abound.

And speaking of things to look forward to, I've been delighted by the many messages and emails recently from our sleepless fans asking when we'll be doing more No Sleep Live shows.

It's nice to know people still want to see us in person.

Well, I can't go into specifics yet, but I will say that we are working on putting together a number of live shows and events in 2026.

So save your pennies and stay fully braced because we'll be announcing things as details become available.

Now, on this episode, we have tales that will bring you life everlasting.

Well, maybe not life, but some manner of existence even after death.

I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but horror stories have a long tradition of tales where things exist after they transition or transform, following their departure from their earthly vessels.

I was trying to recall the common term for this story conceit, but when I asked a friend to remind me what the term is, I never heard back from them.

Sucks to be ghosted like that.

So, no matter what these stories are called, we trust they will haunt you long after the stories end.

Now, tune in, turn on, and brace yourself for our sleepless tales.

In our first tale, we meet two brothers who decide to explore a desolate, burned-out mansion on the edge of a canyon.

Despite it being a place one should certainly avoid, they want to explore the ruins.

But in this tale, shared with us by author G.

Renee Coles, the brothers soon realize the ruins hold dangers far beyond the precarious state of the home.

Performing this tale are Jeff Clement, Matthew Bradford, and Graham Rowett.

So you'd be smart to get your ash out of that place, the place known as the Gray House.

It stood at the end of a block next to a canyon.

It looked dead and laid out as a corpse.

Fire had gutted the right side of it, and part of the side yard had slid into the canyon.

They said the cost of repairs would have been too high.

So nobody bought the place.

Plus, the canyon had not finished swallowing the property.

Every year, a few more inches slipped away.

It had been beige once.

The smoke and ash had turned it gray.

I don't want to do this.

Jay gave me that look.

The challenge.

You afraid of ghosts?

He laughed really hard.

I don't think we're welcome there.

Nobody's been in this place for years.

Come on.

He headed to the burned section.

It had been boarded to seal off access to the unburned interior.

There I saw the first bad sign.

One of the boards had been pried loose.

Nobody's been here, huh?

I mean, we're not the first who want to explore.

Everyone is probably long gone.

Besides, they did us a favor.

They showed us the door.

We went in through what used to be a kitchen.

I'd never seen melted linoleum before.

The sink basin hung partly over empty space where a cabinet had burned away.

On the floor were tracks in the dirt.

A lot of tracks.

I pointed them out to Jay, but he ignored me.

Soot and ash stained the walls with skeletal patterns.

I felt we were walking through someone's remains.

We entered a very Spartan, very eerie dining room.

The fire had not entirely spared this section.

A dining table lay sprawled on the floor, its legs burned off and its middle split.

Above it, a small tilted chandelier looked ready to drop.

It began to move.

Jay and I stared at it for a moment.

We noticed the half-burned drapes moving as well.

A breeze must have stirred them, and the chandelier.

I looked back at the kitchen, but felt no breeze on my face.

What moved the fixture?

We continued without remarks.

I wanted to turn around and leave, but Jay continued.

So did I.

Jay always managed to find trouble.

I always fix things after.

What are big brothers for?

In the living room next to the dining area, we found only a couch and piano, both heavily smoke-damaged.

The piano played a solitary note.

We both jumped.

Neither one of us was near the thing.

One of the pins must have finally given way.

He knew pianos.

I'd have to trust him on this.

But I didn't trust anything else in that place.

That's when I started feeling woozy.

I could see Jay wobbling a bit as well.

I don't feel so good.

Yeah, me.

He stopped and looked into the hall beyond.

Shadows moved.

I wanted to run, but Jay was moving toward the hallway.

I was too, without wanting to.

Something was pulling us into the house.

What's happening?

He sounded scared at last.

The more I resisted, the sicker I felt.

On impulse, I ran forward.

The nausea stopped as the adrenaline kicked into the red zone.

We heard the voices as soon as we stepped into the hallway.

It sounded like whispers mixed with a rhythmic humming.

On either side of the hall were doorless rooms.

We passed by them without stopping.

The doors were there, but off the frames, knocked aside by something unfriendly.

They'd once been bedrooms, but they held no beds I could see.

Instead, they housed something else.

Shadows.

Angry-looking shadows.

We passed a bathroom that looked fully intact.

I thought about trying to duck inside away from the shadows, but something moved out of the shower stall.

Unfortunately, I got a good look at this one.

Big and square, like a bear contemplating a kill.

The face had horns and a snout bulging with sharp fangs, poking out of a mouth that dripped red saliva.

Those yellow eyes burned in slits, and it grinned at us.

We let out a cry and allowed the momentum to carry us quickly past that thing until we reached the end of the hall.

The last room.

The only room here with a working door.

That door was closed.

From inside came the humming.

We stopped.

The things behind us did not.

Those unholy shadows came and passed right through us.

The energy from them flung the door wide open as they plunged into the room, carrying us partway in.

I now understood what had blown the other doors off their hinges.

If I hadn't fallen and tripped Jay on the way, we would have been sucked into the dark pit that had formed in the center of the room.

The shadows fell right in, and they screamed on the way.

I saw the others then.

Around the pit, seated in a circle were six figures in hooded robes.

They weren't humming, I could tell now.

They were chanting.

Foreign words.

And then five words in English.

You are not welcome here.

I think those were the words, or maybe they were an echo of my fear.

Either way, I knew my translation was accurate.

The shadows were gone, but we still felt the vortex pulling at us, pulling us right toward the dark hole where the screams of those unholy creatures grew fainter.

On hands and knees, we used all four limbs to drag ourselves away.

With supreme effort, we began crawling backwards, back to the doorway.

That's where the beast from the shower met us.

It reached down and scooped Jay into its claws.

It scratched out a noise, a thousand fingernails on a chalkboard.

And the noise became words.

If I go,

I take you with me.

Then it reached down for me.

I kicked out at its slimy legs.

I got lucky.

With that unnatural wind pulling at it and my obstruction, the thing lost its balance.

It crashed down, dropping Jay on top of me.

The chanting increased, and the wind from the pit became a hurricane.

It dragged the thing closer and closer toward the darkness, between two of the seated figures who sat unaffected by the cyclone.

And it dragged us too, just a little behind the beast.

At last, the thing fell into the pit with an agonized roar.

And the chanting stopped.

In an instant, the wind from the vortex ceased and the aperture of the pit began to close.

We were free to move.

I had fallen next to one of the sitting figures, but I couldn't see a face beneath the hood.

Nor did I care to search for one.

I jumped up, grabbing Jay and pulling him toward the door.

We fled back through the house, managing to smash into the piano, breaking its fragile legs and sending it crashing with a discordant opus to the floor.

We didn't stop.

Not even when we reached the street.

We kept running.

By the time we reached the cemetery, Jay looked better.

His natural paleness had returned.

As we walked to the familiar plot, he turned to look at me.

I haven't been that scared since that tractor trailer barreled down on us.

You remember?

I'll never forget.

He'd been driving.

It was the one time I couldn't fix things.

We found the gravestones, and I sighed.

He started to sink into the earth.

I too began to descend to the place I would have peace for at least another day.

What were those things in the hood?

His eyes showed the residue of fear.

Exorcists.

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It steps in when your meal's trying to sabotage you.

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Make your food work for you, not against you.

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Sucks, the new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be honest.

Winner, best score.

We demand to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We demand to be quality.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs, playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

Who doesn't like baked goods?

That delicious alchemy of flour, sugar, butter, and love that makes all manner of delicious treats.

Mmm, I'm craving them even more now.

But in this tale, shared with us by author Theodore Snapdragon, we'll meet a woman who encounters a bake sale.

And like her, you may find yourself wanting to avoid those goodies after learning what happens.

Performing this tale are Wafia White and Mary Murphy.

So don't pretend it's your cheat day if you come across the cupcake stand.

The day was swelteringly hot for October.

When I saw the tables by the side of the road, I thought it was some kind of neighborhood Halloween stand.

I realized I was wrong as I approached.

It was an odd place for a bake sale on the side of a dead-end road.

The only reason I was walking here was because my house was in the cul-de-sac at the end of it, but we didn't have many neighbors.

It was a surprisingly large sale.

There were several broad tables full of little cupcakes.

The cupcakes themselves must have taken an astonishing amount of work.

Each one had its own individual decoration.

The flavor seemed to range from chocolate to pistachio to red velvet and beyond, with some cupcakes split half in half or mixed.

Each cupcake was lovingly topped with a glistening glob of icing, some with color swirls.

The edible decorations didn't stop there though.

All of the cupcakes had toppings.

Pieces of elegantly designed chocolate of all variations or some fruits like blueberries or raspberries.

Some had small sugar creations on top.

A candy pumpkin or chocolate lace.

Looking at them all made my mouth water.

I didn't even realize I was hungry until I saw row after row of those colorful little creations.

With their bright colors, they looked more real, more alive than the thin grass and dull houses around them.

Seeing all these beautiful unsold cupcakes and the one little old woman sitting by them in the sun gave me a pang of sympathy.

She must have put so much work into making all of these.

And now she was going to sit by the side of the road for hours and hours and barely sell any.

What a waste.

It was that thought that made me stop by the stand.

The old woman watched me as I bent over to see all the details on each cupcake more clearly.

She had a white gray bun and was in a baby blue sweater despite the heat.

She did fan herself with a little plastic fan, but she still must have been dying without any shade in this sun.

Are you thinking of buying a cupcake, sweetie?

She snapped her fan together.

I looked up at her, a bit startled.

Her voice was scratchy, almost pain, but her expression was as bright as her wares.

She smiled and her chubby cheeks dimpled.

Strangely enough, she barely seemed to be sweating.

Her face was excessively pale, powdered white as bone.

I could see the line of her makeup at her neck, and it made her head almost seem separate from her body.

Um...

It took me a second to remember to stop staring and be polite.

I don't know, but they do look good.

Oh, thank you, sweetie.

The woman's smile grew larger.

It seemed to take up more of her face than her eyes, forehead, and nose combined.

I too work so hard on them.

Are you uh fundraising for something?

It was a perfunctory question more than anything.

I didn't really care.

One of the chocolate cupcakes had caught my eye.

Its icing was a minty green that reminded me of my sister's favorite hat.

And the cupcake looked like it had chocolate chips mixed in.

Oh no, honey.

I just like to add a little sweetness to the world sometimes.

The world seems so sour nowadays.

So bitter.

Yeah.

I had heard enough of old people monologues in my lifetime.

I didn't want to encourage another.

But looking at the chocolate cupcake, I just had to add,

cupcakes look really sweet though.

The old woman continued as though she hadn't heard me.

So bitter.

So many complaints, so little politeness.

People used to take what they had and turn it good.

Now people just complain.

Uh-huh.

I was tuning her out completely at this point, thinking of how long it had been since lunchtime.

The longer I looked at the cupcakes, the more I wanted, needed one.

I knew it was silly.

They were just cupcakes, but something about them felt magical.

In the old days, we would make lemonade out of lemons.

Now people just leave it all to rot.

It's so easy to tell how things are rotting.

You can smell the stench everywhere.

Watching the news, speaking to your family, or even just along the streets.

It feels life with the smell of death.

Right.

It was best to just agree with old folks when they get into it.

Uh, how much is this cupcake?

Oh, it's free.

Her smile had remained on her face throughout all her speech so far, and it widened even further when I asked about the cupcake.

I just love to see people eating my cupcakes.

I love to add a little sweetness to this world.

Preserve a little sweetness.

It's the only pay I need.

Oh.

Something about how the woman spoke made my skin crawl.

I just wanted to grab this cupcake and leave.

When I reached down to pick up the perfect little confection, she spoke again.

Don't leave with it just yet, will you?

I want to see you take a bite.

I just love seeing my customers take a bite.

It's how I know all my hard work really made a difference, sweetie.

She leaned forward towards me, and I saw that her irises were a blue so light, so watered down and bloodshot, that they blend in almost perfectly with the rest of her eyes.

It was like she had no irises at all.

Like she had black dots drawn directly on her eyeballs.

Something in her eyes and the tone of her voice made me hesitate.

I wanted to leave the stand as quickly as I could, but politeness and something else stopped me.

Something else was the feeling I always got around the elderly.

The pity and sadness I felt but tried to keep from touching my voice.

The unseemly and awkward emotional reaction to seeing people whose minds and bodies were failing them.

The uncertainty of what to do about people who you knew would die soon.

The nausea caused by a feeling even deeper within me.

Fear.

A powerful, selfish dread because you knew what was happening to these people was a glimpse at your own fate.

Worse, what was happening to these people was a glimpse at your own fate if you were lucky.

I nodded.

Of course.

I looked down at the cupcake for a moment.

It still looked delicious, but my appetite had suddenly left me.

It's not your fault, you know, you young people.

You could do better with what you've been given, but things would go bad anyway.

It's just a matter of time.

Time rots.

Time sours.

Time has taken everything I've ever had from me.

And all I'm left with are my cupcakes.

My own small attempt to preserve sweetness in this world.

To preserve goodness and beauty.

Her words were strange and far too personal for me, but they inspired more pity in me regardless.

I forced myself to bring the cupcake up to my lips.

After a few moments of hesitation, with her pointed little pupils fixed on me, I bit down.

I only intended a nibble, but a large piece came out right into my mouth.

The taste was even sweeter than I expected.

It was cloying, with an odd metallic edge to it.

It filled every inch of my mouth, and it was all it took for me not to gag.

There was a doughy thickness to it as it spread through my mouth.

I felt like even if I had wanted to spit it out, I wouldn't have been able to, not fully.

I forced my chewing motions, trying desperately to get through it.

I must have made a face, but the lady kept smiling her wide, pleasant smile at me as I squished the unpleasant substance between my teeth.

Finally, I chewed it well enough to try to swallow.

It seemed to resist going down my throat.

Not simply like it was stuck, like it was trying to crawl its way back up and out of me.

I shuddered and winced at the sensation.

Oh, it's all right, sweetie.

It's unpleasant at first, but it's better this way.

I promise.

No one else really understands,

but I do this for you.

It's better this way.

The sacrifice is worth it.

I blinked and looked over at her, not sure I heard her correctly.

The what was worth what now?

The moment was so surreal with her strange words and everything wavering around me.

I realized it was my eyesight that was wavering, not the heat of the day.

I opened my mouth to ask for a glass of water, but a terrible pain in my stomach doubled me over, gasping.

There was so much pain, dull and sharp by turns, pressing out from my abdomen.

It didn't radiate outward.

It pressed in, growing tendrils.

The image of a doughy cupcake pushing out tentacles to rip through my organs came unbidden in my mind.

The thought of it was almost as bad as the sensation itself.

Almost.

As the pain permeated me completely, Every part of my body cracked and broke and changed.

I felt my body distort and distend, surging forward and rounding out as if the world around me grew larger.

I felt like my bones were turned to thick jelly, a new kind of pain, too surreal to compare to anything I'd felt before.

At first, I thought I was falling to the ground.

It took me several dazed moments to realize that it was happening too slowly for me to be falling.

I was shrinking.

I shrank down, my legs and arms growing into my sides.

My head curled over backwards.

I tried to scream, but I couldn't make any noise at all.

I couldn't even feel my mouth.

After an eternity, it was over.

I was on the ground, unable to get up or move at all.

For some reason, I was now as large as the green cupcake sitting next to me.

There was no evidence that someone had bitten into it.

I tried to reach out an arm, but I couldn't.

I didn't have any arms.

I wanted to scream more, now out of shock and fear, to scream and cry.

But I had no no mouth.

And though I could see,

no eyes.

There now, sweetie.

The old woman's voice came from above me.

She sounded pleased.

Isn't this better?

Every blade of grass was taller now.

The dry yellow stalks coming from the ground almost as large as me.

The air and sunlight were still hot on my skin, but I couldn't sweat anymore.

My most basic basic sense of myself was more disoriented than anything else, as I could no longer feel my face, hands, or legs, though I kept desperately trying to move them.

I couldn't even tell where these parts of me were anymore.

It felt like they were just gone.

But I couldn't comprehend that.

A wrinkled hand came down from the sky and grabbed me.

I could feel the pointed nails digging into my sides and flashes of the world around me moving.

I was lifted to the table and sat down right next to that minty green chocolate cupcake.

You'll be sweet now.

The old woman's smile seemed to take up her entire face.

Sweet forever.

Time can't get to you now, sweetie.

I saved you.

You ever sit there staring at your plate thinking, why can't this pasta be just a little healthier without ruining it?

Yeah, me too.

That's why I started using Monch Monch.

It's like a food wingman.

It steps in when your meal's trying to sabotage you.

It blocks extra carbs and sugars before your body gets them, adds fiber your gut actually loves, and keeps your blood sugar from roller coaster.

So yeah, I still eat the pasta.

I just don't pay for it later.

Make your food work for you, not against you.

Go to monchmonch.shop and see what your meals could be with a little backup.

Sucks!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be home!

Winner, best store.

We demand to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We demand to be quality.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs.

Playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

You might be familiar with the concept of a person's soul remaining near the body for a short time after they pass on.

That transference may last seconds or it may last longer.

And when a house has seen many deaths, some of that energy is sure to remain.

But in this tale, shared with us by author Connor Gunnan, we meet a family mourning the passing of a loved one, and their grief manifests in many unique and disturbing ways.

Performing this tale are Mike Delgadio, Matthew Bradford, Graham Rowett, and Sarah Thomas.

So express your grief however you need to, even if it leads to the bewailing.

No place or thing can exist in such a way that violates the first law of thermodynamics.

Energy, it it coldly states, can be transferred from one form to another, but never created or destroyed.

To all who knew it, the Warwick House was a place of ceaseless transfer.

It hunched towards the street as it had for more than 130 years, pushing aside the gnarled oak trees crowding it until their roots ruptured the dying sidewalk.

Its brown shingles were warped and speckled with green, and generations of paint peeled through one another, making the house's true color unknowable.

Neighbors swore they felt its presence pricking the backs of their necks as they neared it.

It was said the house alone knew what had happened to the souls of its former occupants.

Because what is a soul, after all, if not consciousness?

And what is consciousness, if not the electrical energy residue of the brain?

And energy, as we know, cannot be destroyed.

The name on the house's mailbox no longer read Warwick.

Some time ago, but still in living memory, that name changed to Gray, one of whom was now dead.

The body of Helen Gray laid still, but not at rest, in a simple wood-grain casket in a formal living room bordered outside by a veranda porch.

Helen had a slender frame and straight ash-brown hair, grown past her elbows.

She hadn't cut it in the two years she'd been ill.

Her birch-white face was plain and gentle, though a furrowed brow suggested something unfulfilled had followed her to her death.

Her body rested atop several bags of ice, arranged within the casket so that each part of her stayed cold.

Photographs from her youth, pieces of jewelry, an antique doll, and a well-worn children's novel coming apart at the spine were arrayed beneath the casket.

She had turned 40 the month before.

Six-year-old Caleb Gray sat on the front steps under the porch awning.

He was small for his age, with the downturned face of a fledgling introvert.

His nose leaked over his upper lip, and a light crust clung to his cheeks below his vacant eyes.

In his left hand, he held a lightweight white cane with a strap strung loosely around his wrist.

Caleb used the cane to trace shapes in the dirt, a series of imprecise circles, squares, and triangles he could feel but never see because Caleb was blind.

He heard his father's and his sister's voices carry from inside.

He'd rather not be in there with them.

It was easier being alone.

But their conversation reminded him there was still something he had to do.

So Caleb stood up and went inside.

43-year-old Alan Gray stood in the formal living room.

He watched Caleb pass down the hall, tapping his cane as he went.

Alan and his 15-year-old daughter Emma, both dressed all in black, were in the midst of a disagreement.

Alan paused, taking his hand off the rim of his wife's casket, and lowered his voice.

You still haven't decided?

I changed my mind.

It's dumb.

Emma was seated, arms crossed, on one of the 21 padded folding chairs in rows facing the casket.

Potted floral arrangements bookended each of the three rows of chairs.

They were orchids, her mother's favorite.

We all agreed to do it.

Everyone, but now you change your mind.

Emma, I don't get it with you.

The entitlement of it.

Alan searched his daughter's face.

Emma raised her eyes.

That's what you call it now?

Entitled?

Even she wouldn't have wanted to do it.

Her father had come up with an idea for everyone to put keepsakes they shared with Helen in the casket for burial.

Her body, as Emma bemoaned, would not be buried.

The idea seemed hollow to Emma, like it was mostly about making themselves feel okay.

Alan changed tact.

Look, it's just that I still need your help with Caleb.

It'll be easier for him if you do it too.

Emma did not react.

Caleb listened in the hallway.

Then he entered his parents' study.

He set aside his cane and let his fingertips guide him along an oak desk, a bookshelf, and an old indented aluminum filing cabinet.

He was looking for something, but finding it was difficult among the piles of books and stacks of sheet music.

He paused over a violin and felt the space around it for the stick his mother played it with.

He felt around a cluttered closet, under the desk, and reached as far as he could into the the gap between the filing cabinet and the wall.

The stick was what he wanted to place in her casket, and being unable to find it, was beginning to frustrate him.

With his mother gone, even finding this little piece of her felt truly, crucially important.

Then something startled Caleb.

It was breathing, but it wasn't his.

It was a loud, raspy exhale from elsewhere in the room.

He froze.

Dad?

But no reply came.

Caleb grabbed his cane and felt the space around.

There were many old photographs in the Warwick house.

They filled its walls, shelves, and box after box in the attic.

One particular black and white photograph faced Caleb now.

one of the house as it was many decades ago, not long after it was built.

Caleb, of course, could not see it, nor could he see the subject visible in the glare on the photo glass.

It was the reflection of a face,

that of an intense, full-bearded man of perhaps 50.

The man's eyes were what stood out.

They were like white-hot coals in the darkness of the photo, and they gave the full-bearded man a quiet, terrifying fury.

Caleb lowered the cane, assured he was alone.

Then he heard another sound.

Caleb stiffened.

He sensed something there, something that shouldn't be, and it was accompanied by the subtle rising hum of static electricity.

Unsettled, Caleb left the room.

In the formal living room, Emma rotated one of the potted floral arrangements next to her chair to align it with the other one at the other end of the row.

Alan sat down, leaving a seat open between them.

He decided to try Emma one more time.

What were you thinking about putting in?

Before you changed your mind?

Emma didn't answer.

She eyed the same floral pot again and turned it back exactly how it had been.

I thought we were past this.

Past what?

This.

He watched, waiting, knowing she would use the flowers to avoid him again.

She looked back at the pot and checked its position against the one on the row behind them, but never quite reached out to adjust it.

It was truly testing Alan's patience.

People are almost here.

We need to figure this out now.

Emma didn't acknowledge him.

Instead, she reached out and adjusted the flowers by the subtlest amount.

It's too late, Emma.

The bluntness of it resonated.

Emma looks down, her eyes caught in the brown and green swirls of an old rug.

I just thought I'd be ready,

but I'm not.

I want to bury her.

We just should.

It's too late.

Emma wiped her nose.

They heard the tapping of Caleb's cane coming back down the hallway.

He passed by and went back out the front door.

Alan turned towards Emma.

We've talked and talked and.

He cut himself off as Emma turned her back to him.

Alan looked down.

It wounded him.

Can you help me?

Alan looked back up.

Emma had pulled a necklace over her shoulders and was waiting for him to grab the tiny gold clip.

A small jade turtle dangled in front.

It's hers.

Turtles were Helen's favorite.

Touched and relieved, Alan helped her fasten it from behind.

I've always liked this one.

Look, I get why you want a burial,

but it's not what she wanted.

And you'll still have a place to remember her.

It's just a plaque.

She won't really be there.

It's what she decided.

And it saves you $8,000 on a funeral home.

Alan was not used to his daughter's cutting comments.

They were new.

He would have gotten angry if he wasn't so worn out.

We all agreed on this.

Even her.

To bury a casket with her favorite things, and everyone would pick something we shared with her to put inside.

Why, though?

You know.

Because she's donating her body to the Institute.

But why does it have to be her?

Alan sighed.

Going over it once more wouldn't make a difference.

Because her body makes rare antibodies that attack the connections between nerves and between nerves and tissue.

Emma looked sideways and probably, Alan thought, was holding back a tear.

He slid to the empty seat between them and put his arm around her.

Please.

Pick something to put in her casket.

Alan waited, thinking he had finally broken through.

Instead, Emma reached to the side and made another minuscule adjustment to the floral pot.

Alan stood up.

He'd had it with her.

People are almost here.

I have to check on Caleb.

He walked back out onto the porch, where Caleb had returned to tracing his cane in the dirt.

Alan sat on the step beside him.

You doing all right, buddy?

Caleb rubbed the crust from under his eye and nodded.

Are my cousins coming soon?

Yeah, they won't be long.

Have you thought of a thing for your mom yet?

Caleb stopped tracing, giving his father's question his full attention.

The little metal turtle on her desk?

Or her violin stick?

The bow?

I can't find it.

Alan put a hand on his shoulder.

I'll help you.

The bow is a great choice.

You understand why we aren't burying her, right?

To help other people like her.

That's right.

You're pretty smart, bud.

Caleb resumed tracing in the dirt.

Why is Emma mad and I'm just sad?

Alan sat for a moment, genuinely forced to ponder it.

I guess there's a funny thing about grief for adults, what your sister is becoming.

When you're hurting, sometimes it's easier to get mad at whatever caused it because part of you inside still hopes you can change it.

If only you can show whatever it is how much it hurt you.

But after a while, the angry part of you gets smaller and smaller.

Then you think more and more about what you lost.

The happy things.

Then it feels okay to be sad.

Then Then Alan felt something.

A faint sensation in the air like static electricity.

He dreaded that sensation.

He hoped Caleb hadn't noticed it.

Caleb took a long breath.

Dad, I think I'm mad too.

Alan patted him on the back.

You don't have to be.

But it's okay if you are.

His phone buzzed in his pocket.

He read the text and slid the phone back in.

Your cousins are almost here.

Let's go inside and get you cleaned up.

He guided Caleb inside.

I'll be right up.

He nudged him up the stairs toward his room.

In the mirror, he noticed the multiplying creases in his face.

Alan Gray was tired.

Tired from the drudgery of settling his late wife's affairs.

Tired of struggling to appear strong when he felt anything but.

And he couldn't rest.

On recent nights, the house itself seemed to delight in disturbing his sleep.

Maybe the house too was mourning, Alan wondered.

Maybe it didn't know how either.

His phone buzzed again.

Another relative, another imminent arrival.

He adjusted and buttoned his suit in the mirror.

It was tighter than he remembered.

He exhaled slowly.

Thank you, everyone.

He stopped, taking a moment to practice.

Thank you for coming, everyone.

It means a lot to us for so many of you to make the trip on such short notice.

The funeral went on without incident.

Caleb played with his cousins and Emma distracted herself by chatting with her aunts and grandparents.

Still, she would not choose an item to place in the casket.

By the time night descended and the funeral of Helen Gray had ended, some in attendance knew all was not as it was supposed to be in the Warwick house.

The indoor lights felt especially bright, and the air itself, some noticed, was buzzing.

And while no one spoke of it outright, the guests thought the soul of the Warwick house seemed especially alert.

When the lights finally went off, and everyone had gone home, Ellen spent a moment with Helen's casket.

There were more items placed beneath it now.

People from the Institute would be there to take her body in the morning.

He replaced the ice bags surrounding her, as he had every four hours.

One under the head and neck, two on either side of the torso, and two more supporting her legs.

Then he shut the lid.

Alan loosened his tie, hung up his jacket, and went to the study.

He had not not found Helen's violin bow for Caleb yet.

He moved aside the books, stacks of sheet music and framed photographs.

He paused on a particular photo.

It was the oldest photo in the home, a picture of a middle-aged, full-bearded man wearing a tall opera hat and black dinner jacket.

Even with the grainy, ethereal quality of the antique black-and-white image, there was an eerie intensity in the man's eyes that felt threatening.

Alan thought he could finally put some of these old photos away for good now, and he'd start with this one of the full bearded man in the opera hat.

But that was another day's chore.

For now, he needed to find the bow.

He pulled the dented filing cabinet back from the wall.

He stuck his arm behind it, and his fingertips grazed the bow.

Alan placed the bow under Helen's casket.

Now he had only Emma's item to worry about.

Or maybe

he just let it go.

A sound interrupted his train of thought.

It wasn't loud, but the abruptness of it in the stillness of the night was startling.

He looked up at the window.

Something stood there in the space between the curtains and the glass.

A broad silhouette with the sharply tapered shoulders and long coattails of an old-fashioned dinner jacket.

Alan's mind went to the photograph of the full-bearded man.

But the dark figure here did not wear a hat.

He straightened his spine and blinked.

The sound evoked that of watch hands.

and tracked with the movement of Alan's eyelids.

By the time his eyes could refocus, the dark figure had vanished.

The figments of shadow Alan saw in the Warwick house always disappeared quickly.

So quickly, in fact, that it became comfortingly easy to dismiss them.

They vanished so cleanly that it only reinforced a sense of normality.

And death, he reasoned, was perhaps the most normal thing of all.

It was just hard to cope with.

And that difficulty could present itself to the mind in any number of unusual ways.

By the time Alan retired to his bedroom, Emma and Caleb were sound asleep.

Emma lay on top of her bedspread, still in her dress.

Alan did not disturb her.

Caleb lay in his bedsheets just the way his mother had always done for him.

Alan went down the hall and shut the door to his bedroom.

But something else was occurring at the far end of the long hall that divided the second story.

Halfway down its length, the hall jogged to the side to clear a staircase.

Past that and two doors down was a walk-in closet.

The closet door was open and cast a long shadow across the moonlit wooden floor.

Inside the closet, it was as if a black orifice into the Warwick house had opened.

If Alan had glanced behind him, he might have seen a pinprick of white light by itself in the closet,

its source a mystery.

And had he looked a little longer, he would have seen a second pinprick appear beside the first.

Sometimes, neighbors and visitors said the Warwick house had a way of looking at you.

In Caleb's room, the house had begun to do more than just look.

A full glass of water stood on the nightstand beside his bed.

As Caleb turned over in his sleep, the glass chilled and beads of water ran down its side.

The doorknob twisted and snapped shut.

Still asleep, Caleb curled up and clutched his knees.

The doorknob twisted again, further this time, until the door eased open.

But no one stood in the doorway.

There was only a sound.

A soft, repeating sound.

In then out.

As Caleb edged closer to waking, His mind recognized the sound.

Breathing.

And its source had moved from the doorway to right over Caleb's bed.

His breaths fell in sync with the unseen presence.

In,

then out.

His hair suddenly moved.

Strands pulled together and lifted off his scalp.

First a few, but then more.

Caleb stirred, and as he turned back over, caused a sharp pinch and a tug, jolting him awake.

Dad?

Caleb sat up and wiped his nose.

He felt the spot on his head where his hair had been pulled, and he reached for his cane where he always left it, resting against the nightstand.

But it wasn't there.

Dad?

Caleb was still able to hear the breathing.

When no response came, he climbed out of the bed and felt along the wall and the side of his bed for the cane.

His bare foot rolled over it on the floor.

Caleb fell and landed hard, but he wasn't alarmed.

Navigating his young life without sight had helped make him accustomed to such things.

But something about the situation unnerved him.

He would never have left his cane on the floor, and neither would his father.

Caleb grabbed it and stood up.

The sound of breathing ceased.

He probed the darkness in front of him with the cane, finding nothing.

He needed to use the bathroom.

After that, he hoped he could sleep.

But when he reached for the door, it was already open.

Something that, again, neither he nor his father would have done.

Caleb tapped the cane down the hall.

It was quiet in the bathroom besides the splash of water and the flush of the toilet.

On his way back, he paused at Emma's door and was startled to discover that it too was wide open.

Sis.

He waited.

Emma?

There was no answer, but Caleb heard something else.

Two sets of breathing in tandem.

It was the same thing he heard upon waking.

And one set certainly wasn't Emma's.

Dead?

Again, no response.

What he couldn't see was a dark presence.

A silhouette, darker than the shadows crouching at bedside.

Its upper body loomed over Emma, moving closer to her face.

He walked inside and probed around the foot of her bed with his cane, registering nothing.

The silhouette stood.

It was tall and lean, with long limbs, pointed elbows, and lacking the shape of hair.

The bed creaked.

The sound made Caleb's stomach leap to his throat, and he fled the room.

Caleb wanted his father.

As he walked back down the long hallway, something approached him from the opposite end.

It came out of the dark walk-in closet, rolling silently in his direction.

It was an antique wheelchair, empty.

and seemingly moving under its own power.

It had a wicker backrest, a frayed seat cushion, and wheels rimmed with crumbling century-old rubber.

It neared Caleb with a preternatural quietness that eluded even him.

A wheel missed the tip of Caleb's cane by an inch without him noticing.

A slight charge in the air that tingled his forearm was the only inkling of not being alone.

Caleb and the wheelchair passed one another as they reached the staircase halfway down the hall.

Then the wheelchair halted.

The wheels squeaked as it swiveled to face him from behind.

This time Caleb heard it.

He braced and grabbed the railing, his heart pounding against his ribcage.

His father's room was only a little further.

Everything would be okay once he reached it, he told himself.

But had Caleb been able to see, and had he looked behind him, he would have seen the dark figure now occupying the wheelchair.

An emaciated, very old man with pale, white eyes faced him.

His crooked mouth twisted upward, one side slightly more than the other.

Caleb reached the master bedroom and opened the door, careful not to tap too loudly.

Alan was asleep.

Dead?

He tiptoed toward the bed, wholly unaware of the gloomy, hunched-over figure with long, unkempt hair at the foot of Alan's bed.

Moonlight showed only its face, that of a haggard, ailing woman.

with eyes that threatened to bore holes through all they looked upon.

She stayed still as Caleb passed her, regarding him with a scornful yet curious glare.

His cane nudged something.

He bent down and touched it.

It was a flattened circle made of black silk stretched around a wire frame.

The middle of the circle popped upward, assuming the form of a collapsible opera hat.

It was the same hat worn by the full-bearded man in the old photograph Alan found unsettling.

Caleb went still, genuinely frightened now.

The hunched woman looked up and backed away out of the moonlight.

The broad-shouldered shape of the full-bearded man emerged from around the corner of a wardrobe, gold pocket watch dangling from his black dinner jacket.

He bent down in front of Caleb and donned the opera hat with a growling exhale, eyeing him as if he caught him playing with it.

The deliberate k-thump of his footsteps and the deep tone of his breathing told Caleb all he needed to know about the bearded man.

That he was terrifying.

Caleb wanted to reach his father, but the full bearded man stood between him and the bed.

Dad!

Dad!

Dad!

He attempted to yell, only his voice was muffled, his throat constricted.

He feared whatever was in there with him wanted him silent.

Caleb hurried out the door.

There was one place he wanted to be now, only one thing that provided him solace, and he vowed to go to it.

Caleb headed for the stairs, where the very old man in the wheelchair still waited.

A wool bedrobe barely clung to his bony frame.

Liver spots covering his sagging skin and cataracts clouded his eyes.

A lone floorboard creaked as the very old man nudged the wheelchair toward Caleb.

Caleb reached out with his cane, coming within inches of the very old man's face.

The very old man opened his mouth slightly, then ever wider, curling up at the the corners at first, but then gaping in anticipation of something coming Caleb's way from behind.

Heavy boots landed on the wooden floor behind him.

The very old man backed the wheelchair away.

The full-bearded man approached him from down the hall, the gold pocket watch swinging as he walked.

Caleb's breaths came faster, and his eyes and nose seeped as he descended the stairs.

A door swung open in Caleb's path when he reached the bottom.

A young girl, perhaps a year older than him and completely bald, rushed out of the kitchen.

Dark circles hung from her eyes, and a pair of oxygen tubes ran from her nostrils over her ears.

She tilted her head, observing him for an interested moment.

A flicker of mischief crossed her face, and she disappeared around a hallway corner.

Caleb heard only the patter of her bare feet, a slight giggle, and the clattering of the wheels of the metal oxygen tank she pulled along behind her.

Caleb had heard pieces of the stories of the Warwick house throughout his young life.

They meant little to him, and his mother had a way of making them seem harmless.

But tonight was different.

He understood where the stories came from now.

Caleb was frightened, but he still had somewhere he needed to go, something he was compelled to do while he still could.

He held his cane steady and moved his feet.

Caleb had walked no more than three paces when another door opened in his path and a presence blew by him.

An old woman,

a decade or two younger than the very old man, shuffled her feet, following the girl with the oxygen tank.

She paused before rounding the corner to look at Caleb with a kind but melancholy frown.

Caleb stood, frozen, awaiting a sound or anything at all to tell him that he was safe to proceed.

Finally,

the young girl giggled, and the old woman's feet shuffled after her.

Halfway down the hall was the formal living room.

Caleb proceeded in.

His scalp tingled.

The air in the room felt alive, like it was its own organism, a bustling nervous system of the many who had transferred but never truly disappeared.

Yet when Caleb listened,

he heard nothing.

No footsteps, no voices or laughter, no ticking of a pocket watch or the sound of heavy boots.

He heard only the frantic beating of his own heart and the whistle of air through his congested sinuses.

He felt his way to the casket and ran his fingers along the wood grain until he felt the seam where the lid met the side.

He set down his cane and opened the lid as far as he could.

The chill in the air from the ice bags was instant, and he let the lid back down.

He needed to lift it higher.

Caleb dragged over one of the folding chairs.

He climbed up on the seat and lifted the casket lid again.

This time until it stayed put in the open position.

Inside lay the unremarkable yet beautiful corpse of his mother, Helen Gray.

He carefully removed the two ice bags on her left side, lifting the slick bags over the casket lid until they dropped to the floor.

He repositioned the chair and removed the bags supporting her head and neck, right side and legs.

Then he climbed back up.

He steadied himself and tested the casket's balance.

Caleb placed a foot in his mother's casket and lowered himself into the nook of her arm.

He closed his moist eyes and stroked the contours of her face.

The tall, thin silhouette from Emma's bedroom approached the head of the casket.

It was several shades darker than the night.

its long limbs and pointed elbows slicing through the shadows as it walked.

It stopped and stood still, looming over the casket with an object in its left hand.

Had Caleb's eyes permitted it, he would have seen his mother's face looking down at him.

Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun here, rather than flowing past her elbows as it did in the casket.

The silhouette and Helen Gray were one and the same.

A soul, a consciousness freshly transferred.

She gazed at her son lying with her vestigial body and a tear ran down the crease between her nose and her ghostly cheek.

Helen raised her left hand.

She was holding her violin.

She brought it up to her collarbone.

and held it in place with her shoulder.

Then, her right hand began to move back and forth in a precise rhythm, playing silently with a phantom bow in an unconscious-looking action.

On the ledges and table surfaces around the room were more framed photos.

They showed Caleb with his mother, father, and sister.

Caleb and Emma with the bald girl, perhaps a cousin who had become ill and left too soon.

The very old man in the antique wheelchair.

The haggard, hunched-over woman.

The old woman who had followed the bald girl.

They were grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and more.

Suddenly, Helen turned around.

Emma stared into the formal living room from the hallway.

A small metal turtle destined for the pile of mementos under the casket wobbled on the floor where she had just dropped it.

Emma could see what her brother could not.

The entire room was cast in an odd green glow and hummed with static.

The impossibility of her dead mother standing there, moving as if playing her violin shocked and terrified her.

Emma darted out of the doorway and back into the hall.

She sat huddled against the wall, clutching her knees to her chest.

A spindly, ominous shadow stretched down the hallway after her.

Emma cuffed her mouth and shut her eyes.

She opened them after a moment to see Helen standing over her, resting the violin at her side and smiling sadly.

Emma couldn't believe what her eyes told her,

because believing it hurt more than she could bear.

She closed and opened them again, wishing the sight of her mother away.

But Helen remained.

Emma scrambled up.

Dad!

Dad!

She ran for the stairs.

The charge in the air that gave the formal living room its ethereal life faded.

Helen had vanished, as had the green glow when Emma returned with Helen.

None of what she had so frightfully told her father she saw was there.

He held her close and kissed the top of her head.

It's okay.

But then they noticed the open casket.

Caleb was inside, asleep next to his mother's body.

The fear, resentment, and resistance Emma had been harboring shattered.

She tried to wipe the tears away at first, but could only succumb to them.

The release was too overwhelming, too long overdue.

It was good, Alan thought, that Emma had finally permitted herself to be sad.

He woke Caleb and lifted him out of the casket, hugging him tight and setting him down beside them.

Dad?

Yeah, bud.

It's me.

Alan pulled his son close as the three of them held each other in a cathartic embrace.

Then Alan's scalp began to tingle.

A buzz in the air prickled the hairs on Emma's arms.

They looked up to witness the glow return to the room.

Emma Emma was the first to notice the odd wheelchair with a wicker backrest sitting empty in the back of the room.

Its sudden appearance was inexplicable.

The patter of bare feet and clattering of wheels sounded from the hall.

Alan touched the back of his neck where he felt the rising and falling of air,

breaths in unison with his own.

Helen's ghost joined their embrace.

Her eyes met Alan's,

then Emma's.

This time Emma wasn't afraid,

and Alan's shock quickly gave way.

Emma bent down to pick up the metal turtle she had dropped,

then walked to the casket to place it in the pile of mementos beneath.

When they separated, Helen resumed moving her empty hand as if still playing the violin she held in her left.

Her eyes grew solemn and vacant.

Alan went to the pile and took the bow he had put there earlier,

then placed it in Caleb's hand to give to his mother.

Helen's eyes focused.

She took the bow and began to play.

The piece started mellow and somber,

then rose to something vibrant and powerful.

Emma's eyes darted to the windows where the curtains now swayed.

Behind them, the glass seemed to have chilled and fogged.

Then, one by one,

they appeared.

The very old man in the wheelchair, the old woman, the bald girl with the oxygen tank, the hunched-over woman, whose face no longer bore the look of scorn.

They emerged from doorways and hallways, out from the shadows and the very depths of the night itself.

There were many more than the handful Caleb had encountered, at least two dozen spirits in all, many of them found in the dusty photographs arranged around the home.

They stuck to the edges of the room as they acknowledged one another another by bowing their heads or tipping their hats.

For them, this was not a funeral,

but a reunion.

Helen shared glances with each of them while she played her tragic yet hopeful melody.

The spirits all turned at once.

The telltale sounds repeated, and the full-bearded man entered.

All eyes eyes went to him.

The spirits wearing hats removed them.

Alan and Emma stiffened, taken aback by his presence.

They looked to Helen, who continued to play.

The full bearded man stood by the casket, listening, watching.

Finally, he took a step, came closer,

and removed the the opera hat.

The other spirits followed his lead.

All two dozen of them formed a circle around Helen, Alan, Emma, and Caleb.

Alan's eyes lingered on a single black and white photograph on the mantle above the fireplace.

It was another photo of the full-bearded man,

the great family patriarch holding a shovel with the house under construction behind him.

He wasn't smiling in the photo, as was not the custom during the patriarch's day.

But Alan saw something different in him now.

Something softer.

And in that moment, he decided that every photo in the Warwick house indeed had its place.

Alan looked up from the photo, and the patriarch dipped his head in the subtlest of gestures.

The spirits' faces displayed a range of emotions, from sorrow to gratitude, as Helen played her farewell.

Caleb hugged his mother's waist and absorbed the notes of her music and the comfort of her touch,

perhaps for the final time.

Helen Gray's family had a rich history in their town, dating back to well before her great, great, great-grandfather built their infamous house where countless members lived and died.

With her children and her husband able to accept her passing, Helen could now rest, having left the mortal world in the very place she entered it.

Her name, of course, was not always Gray, but Warwick.

And as the years and generations went by, like her ancestors who wandered its rooms, halls, and grounds long before her,

sometimes seen, but usually not,

the Warwick House alone knew what happened to the soul of Helen Gray.

Our tales may be over, but they are still out there.

Be sure to join us next week so you can stay safe, stay secure, and stay sleepless.

The No Sleep Podcast is presented by Creative Reason Media.

The musical score was composed by Brandon Boone.

Our production team is Phil Michulski, Jeff Clement, Jesse Cornett, and Claudius Moore.

Our editorial team is Jessica McAvoy, Ashley McInelly, Ollie A.

White, and Kristen Semito.

To discover how you can get even more sleepless horror stories from us, just visit sleepless.thenosleeppodcast.com to learn about the sleepless sanctuary.

Add Add-free, extended episodes each week, and lots of bonus content for the dark hours, all for one low monthly price.

On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep Podcast, we thank you for joining us and seeking safety from the things that stalk us in the night.

This audio program is Copyright 2025 by Creative Reason Media Inc.

All rights reserved.

The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors.

No duplication or reproduction of this audio program is permitted without the written consent of Creative Reason Media Inc.

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