Welcome.

To Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

Hey, and welcome to the Spooktacular. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry the Gould. Jerome Rowland is here, and we're about to get jiggly with it, Halloween style.

That's right. It's one of our favorite episodes of the year.

Yeah. We'd like to remind everyone this is one of two ad-free episodes we do every year.

That's right.

I feel like lately we have been just for the uninitiated, giving a quick overview of what we do here on Halloween. And that is we read a couple of public domain scary stories, short stories from now up to 1928 and previous. Yeah?

I think so. Maybe 1927, one of the two.

These aren't even, I think mine was from before that.

Even though. Yeah, we're not even close to the line right now.

No, we don't want to get litigious that anyone to get litigious with this. That's right. We're not even dancing close to the line.

If you have no idea what we're talking about, goes into our intellectual property episode. It basically explains our Halloween episode.

That's right. But Josh picks one out, I pick one out. It has become very fun in recent years as Josh has gotten more creative with his voice work.

Yeah. I'm actually really nervous because it's a tough act to follow. I thought, Well, I'll just bring Meghan back. I have been summoning Meghan's spirit to take over my body again.

Nothing?

Nothing. I've done so many unspeakable acts as offerings to bring Meghan back. Basically, I'm like Emma Roberts at the end of Black Coat's daughter, just screaming in frustration because I can't get possess again. I'm sorry, everyone. I don't think Meghan is going to be here this year.

Yeah, it's like Emma Roberts at the end of Black Coat's daughter screaming like everyone in the theater. I don't even look that much like that other girl.

Yeah, that was a rather serious transition.

Yeah, that was just me, though. But I know what you mean. It seems like there's nowhere to go but down after Meagull. I mean, that was a Josh Apex, for sure.

So I guess then maybe we'll just call this episode a wash. I won't even try. And we'll get back to business again next year. How about that?

Yeah, that sounds great. And I actually did a little road testing of some different British accents. Oh, good. But I have no idea what's going to come out of my mouth or yours and that it's not going to be as rehearsed.

I've learned to speak German. Right. Really? No. I had to say that. If I had, I would not have told you or anybody else ahead of time just now. I would have just started speaking German.

That would have been amazing.

It would have been, but this episode is a wash this year, so I'm not going to be speaking German either.

Which one do you want to start with? You want to do yours or mine? I think they're both terrific.

I don't know. I've got no persuasion either way, or I'm not being persuaded either way. Is there any of the two that you feel even remotely more like should go first? Yeah.

For some reason, instinctually, I just went to pick up yours. Okay. I think it's the gripping and spooky and a good place setter. It's H. G. Wells. It's a classic author.

Yeah.

Let's dig into yours.

Okay. H. G.

Wells. I'm trying to remember my parts, though.

You are the old man with the shade on his head? Okay.

He's the one that walks in last, right?

Yes. And then the old lady.

Oh, perfect.

Okay. This is H. D. Wells, everybody, the guy who predicted our current rocket program with NASA and wrote The Time Machine and did all sorts of really neat stuff. He also wrote a scary story, and that's what we're going to read now. It's called The Red Room. Chuck, how about you narrate first?

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to The Reading of the Red Room by H. T. Wells.

No, I meant in the story.

Oh, yeah, sure.

That word, too. I didn't know.

What she meant. I was like, What narration are you talking about? You're just talking about reading it.

You're like, All right, don't give it a try. Okay. Okay, you're ready?

Sure. But you're playing the main role, so you're starting, right?

Exactly. Okay. I can assure you, said I, that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me. I stood.

Up before the fire with my glass in my hand.

It is your own choosing. Said the.

Man with the withered arm.

And- I want to take that again.

Okay.

It's your own choosing, I hope.

Said the man with the withered arm and glanced at me askantz.

Eight and twenty years. Said I. I have lived and never a ghost have I seen as yet.

The old woman sat staring hard into the fire, her pale eyes wide open.

Eye.

She broke in.

An 80 and 20 years you have lived and never seen the likes of this house, I reckon. There's a many things to see when one's still but eight and 20.

She's making fun of this guy for being 28 years old.

Yeah.

She swayed her head slowly from side to side.

A many things to see and sorrow for.

I half suspected the old people were trying to enhance the spiritual terrorists of their house by their droning insistence. I put down my empty glass on the table and looked about the room and caught a glimpse of myself, abbreviated and broadened to an impossible stardiness and the queer old mirror at the end of the room.

Well.

I said.

If I see anything tonight, I shall be much the wiser for I come to the business with an open mind. I'm so disappointed with myself this year. Oh, yeah, it's me. It's your choosing.

Said the man with a withered arm once more. I heard the faint sound of a stick and a shambling step on the flags in the passage outside. The door creaked on its hinges as a second old man entered. More bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the first. He supported himself by the help of a crutch. His eyes were covered by a shade and his lower lip half averted, hung pale and pink from his decaying yellow teeth. He made straight for an armchair on the opposite side of the table, sat down clumsily and began to cough.

The.

Man with a withered hand gave the newcomer a short glance of positive dislikes. The old woman took no notice of his arrival, but remained with her eyes fixed steadily in the fire.

I said, It's your own choosing.

Said the man with a withered hand when the coughing had ceased for a while.

It's my own choosing.

I answered. The man with the shade became aware of my presence for the first time and threw his head back for a moment and sideways to see me. I caught a momentary glimpse of his eyes small and bright and inflamed. Then he began to cough and sputter again.

What did.

You drink?

Said the man with a withered arm pushing the beer toward him. The man with the shade poured out a glass full with a shaking hand that splashed half as much again on the deal table. A monstrous shadow of him crouched upon the wall and mocked his action as he poured and drank. I must confess, I had scarcely expected these grotesque custodians. There is to my mind something inhuman insinility, something crouching and ativistic. The human quality seemed to drop from old people insensibly, day by day. The three of them made me feel uncomfortable with their gaunt silences, their bent carriage, their evident unfriendliness to me and to one another. That night, perhaps, I was in the mood for uncomfortable impressions. I resolved to get away from their vague foreshadowings of the evil things upstairs.

So ageist.

Very ageist.

If, said I, you will show me to this haunted room of yours. I will make myself comfortable there.

The old man with a cough jerked his head back so suddenly that it startled me and shot another glance of his red eyes at me from out of the darkness under the shade. But no one answered me. I waited a minute, glancing from one to the other. The old woman staring like a dead body, glaring into the fire with lackluster eyes. If, I said a little louder, if.

You will show me to this haunted room of yours, I will relieve you from the task of entertaining me. There's a candle on the slab outside the door.

Said the man with a withered hand. Looking at my feet as he addressed me. But if you.

Go to the.

Red room tonight?

This.

Night of all.

Nights, said the old woman softly. You go alone.

Very well.

I answered shortly.

And which way do I go? This guy is sick of the old people by now. He's just actively mad at them.

He is. He's being very aggressive.

You go along the passage for a little bit.

Said he, nodding his head on his shoulder at.

The door. Until you come to a spiral staircase and on the second landing is a door covered with green bays. Go through that and down the corridor to the end of the red room is on your left up the steps. Have I got that right?

I said and repeated his directions. He corrected me in one particular.

And are you really going?

Said the man with the shade looking at me again for the third time with that queer, unnatural tilting of the face. This night of all nights, whispered the old woman.

It is what I came for.

I said and moved toward the door. As I did so, the old man with the shade rose and staggered around the table so as to be closer to the others and to the fire. At the door, I turned and looked at them and saw they were all close together, dark against the firelight, staring at me over their shoulders with an intent expression on their ancient faces.

Good night.

I said, setting the door open.

It's your own choosing.

I said, the man with a withered arm. All right, so as we like to do, little recap. This guy has come to this spooky place and there are three olds there and this guy doesn't like olds.

No, he doesn't like them and they don't seem to like him very much. I think they also are taking him as foolish, overly Cavalier, and getting himself into hot water, to put it mildly.

Yeah, because he wants to spend the night in this room that we don't even know anything about, but I'm already scared.

Yeah, it's a scary room that you would not want to go into. They're half talking amount of it, maybe. I don't know, maybe a quarter.

All right. You ready? I'll buy that. Yeah, let's go. Switch it up.

I left the door wide open until the candle was well at light, and then I shut them in and walked down the chilly, echoing passage. I must confess that the oddness of these three old pensioners in whose charge her ladieship had left the castle and the deep-toned, old-fashioned furniture of the housekeeper's room in which they foregathered had affected me curiously in spite of my effort to keep myself at a matter-of-fact phase. They seemed to belong to another age, an older age, an age when things spiritual were indeed to be feared. A age when common sense was uncommon, an age when omens and witches were credible and ghosts beyond denying. Their very existence, thought I, as spectral. The cut of their clothing, fashions born in dead brains. I think he's talking about Norcore here.

Yeah?

The ornament and conveniences in the room about them even are ghostly. The thoughts of vanished men, which still haunt rather than participate in the world of today. The passage I was in, long and shadowy, with a film of moisture glistening on the wall, was as gaunt and cold as a thing that is dead and rigid. But with an effort, I sent such thoughts to the right about. The long, draughty, subterraanean passage was chilly and dusty, and my candle flared and made the shadows cower and quiver. The echoes rang up and down the spiral staircase, and a shadow came sweeping up after me and another fled before me into the darkness overhead. I came to the wide landing and stopped there for a moment, listening to a rustling that I fancied I heard creeping behind me. Then, satisfied of the absolute silence, pushed open the unwilling base-covered door and stood in the silent corridor.

Base is like a felt.

That's what I got too, like what they used to put on billiard tables.

Yeah, might look nice on a door. You never know.

It's a weird choice. Kind of upsetting if you think about it. Should I keep going?

Yeah. Okay.

The effect was scarcely what I expected. For the moonlight, coming in by the great window on the grand staircase, picked out everything in vivid black shadow or reticulated silvery illumination. Everything seemed in its proper position, the house might have been deserted on the yesterday instead of 12 months ago. There were candles in the sockets of the sconzes, and whatever dust had gathered on the carpets or upon the polished flooring was distributed so evenly as to be invisible in my candlelight. Awaiting stillness was over everything. I was about to advance and stopped abruptly. A bronze group stood upon the landing, hidden from me by a corner of the wall, but its shadow fell with marvelous distinctness upon the white paneling and gave me the impression of someone crouching to waylay me. The thing jumped upon my attention suddenly. I stood rigid for a half a moment, perhaps. Then, with my hand in the pocket that held the revolver, I advanced, only to discover a ganymede and eagle glistening in the moonlight. That incident for a time restored my nerve. By the way, ganymede was the most beautiful, mortal, and eagle who Zuse kidnapped and took as basically a love slave.

Yeah, and a ganymede and eagle. It's just like a little statue of an eagle with this ganymedean character.

But the shadow was super scary for a second.

I believe it.

The door of the red room and the steps up to it were in a shadowy corner. I moved my candle from side to side in order to see clearly the nature of the recess in which I stood before opening the door. Here it was, I thought, that my predecessor was found and the memory of this story gave me a sudden twinge of apprehension. I glanced over my shoulder at the black ganymede and the moonlight and opened the door of the red room rather hastily, with my face half turned to the pallid silence of the corridor. I entered, closed the door behind me at once, turned the key I found in the lock within and stood with the candle held above, surveying the scene of my vigil, the great red room of Lorraine Castle in which the young duke had died, or rather in which he had begun his dying, for he had opened the door and fallen headlong down the steps I had just ascended. That had been the end of his vigil, of his gallant attempt to conquer the ghostly tradition of the place. Never, I thought, had Apoplexy better served the ends of superstition.

There were other and older stories that clung to the room back to the half-incredible beginning of it all, the tale of a timid wife and the tragic end that came to her husband's gest of frightening her. Looking around that huge shadowy room with its black window bays, its recesses and its dusty brown-red hangings and dark, gigantic furniture, one could well understand the legends that had sprouted in its black corners, its germinating darknesses. My candle was a little tongue of light in the vastness of the chamber. Its rays failed to pierce to the opposite end of the room and left an ocean of dull red mystery and suggestion, sentinel shadows and watching darknesses beyond its island of light and the stillness of desolation, brooded over it all.

All right, so like a lot of these stories, you get a little bit of a vague setup, and then they dole out what's happening.

As.

It goes on.

Pretty much what he's doing here, I'd say.

Yeah. So he got this guy. He's going to this castle now where the person before him that went to ghost investigate, threw him, sounds like he threw himself down the stairs and took his life, right?

With madness? I get the impression he was trying to get the heck out of that room and died falling down the stairs, maybe.

Okay. Either one. And then this whole thing was haunted, though, by a woman. And do I gather that her husband used to kiddingly frighten her and that led to.

A death? That's what I took it as, yeah.

Okay. Not a nice guy. Don't do that, guys.

No, it wasn't just. I'm sure he regretted it pretty deeply afterward if he was even halfway decent. Right. Are you taking over now?

Yeah, that feels like.

A switcheroo. I think so, too.

All right, so this guy is in this room now, finally. He's all set to go. Here we go. I must confess, some of the palpable quality of that ancient room disturbed me. I tried to fight the feeling down. I resolved to make a systematic examination of the place. By leaving nothing to the imagination, dispel the fanciful suggestions of the obscurity before they obtained a hold upon me. After satisfying myself of the fastening of the door, I love that. I get the feeling this guy's checked to make sure it was locked eight times. I began to walk around the room peering round each article of furniture, tucking up the balances of the bed and opening its curtains wide. Basically, this guy is doing what any kid would do.

Yeah, he's trying to bring as much light as possible in there and checking everything, right?

Well, yeah, he's looking at me. He's like, I don't want those sheets hanging down below what's under the bed. Let's tuck that in. Let's lock the door eight times. I like this guy. In one place, there was a distinct echo to my footsteps. The noises I made seemed so little that they enhanced rather than broke the silence of the place. I pulled up the blinds and examined the fastenings of the several windows. Attracted by the fall of a particle of dust, I leaned forward and looked up the blackness of the wide chimney. Then, trying to preserve my scientific attitude of mind, I walked around and began tapping the oak paneling for any secret opening. But I desisted before reaching the alcove. I saw my face in a mirror, white. What color do you think he was?

I don't know. I think he might have been like, pale as a sheep thing. He looked scared, maybe.

I think so. There were two big mirrors in the room, each with a pair of sconeses bearing candles and on the mantle shelf, too, were candles in China, candlesticks. All these I lit one after the other. The fire was laid and unexpected consideration from the old housekeeper, and I lit it to keep down any disposition to shiver. When it was burning well, I stood round with my back to it and regarded the room again. I had pulled up a chintz covered armchair and a table to form a barricade before me. On this lay my revolver ready to hand. That's right, he's strapped. That was pretty important. My precise examination had done me a little good, but I still found the remote or darkness of the place in its perfect stillness too stimulating for the imagination. The echoing of the stir and crackling of the fire was no comfort to me. The shadow in the alcove at the end of the room began to display that indefinable quality of a presence. That odd suggestion of a lurking living thing comes so easily in silence and solitude. To reassure myself, I walked with a candle into it and satisfied myself that there was nothing tangible there.

I stood that candle upon the floor of the alcove and left it in that position. By this time, I was in a state of considerable nervous tension, although to my reason, there was no adequate cause for my condition. My mind, however, was perfectly clear. I postulated quite unreservedly that nothing supernatural could happen. To pass the time, I began stringing some rimes together in Goldsby fashion concerning the original legend of the place. A few I spoke aloud, but the echoes were not pleasant. For some reason, I also abandoned, after a time, a conversation with myself upon the impossibility of ghosts and haunting. My mind reverted to the three old and distorted people downstairs, and I tried to keep it upon that topic. Yeah, right. He's like doing the, Oh, I'm not scared thing.

Right.

Talking out loud. Talking himself out.

Of it. In Goldsby apparently wrote Legends and Lures and stuff as poems.

I guess that's what he's- Okay, that's a name.

Yeah. You ready? Yep. I am too. The somber reds and grays of the room troubled me. Even with its seven candles, the place was merely dim. The light and the alco flaring in a draught and the fire flickering kept the shadows and penumbra perpetually shifting and stirring in a noiseless, flighty dance. Casting about for a remedy, I recalled the wax candles I had seen in the corridor and with a slight effort carrying a candle and leaving the door open, I walked out into the moonlight and presently returned with as many as 10. These I put in the various knickknacks of China, with which the room was sparsely adorned and lit and placed them where the shadows had laying deepest, some on the floor, some in the window recesses, arranging and rearranging them until at last, my 17 candles were so placed that not an inch of the room but had the direct light of at least one of them. It occurred to me that when the ghost came, I could warn him not to trip over them. Ha-ha. The room was now quite brightly illuminated. There was something very cheering and reassuring in these little silent, streaming flames, and to notice their steady diminution of length offered me an occupation and gave me a reassuring sense of the passage of time.

Can you imagine what a... Now you go into a scary room, you just turn on all those lights.

Exactly.

This is- It took 20 minutes to do it back then. Right.

Also, he's so trying to make time pass that he's staring at candles melting. Yeah. That's reassuring. That's how up and arms he is.

Yeah, good times.

Even with that, however, the brooding expectation of the vigil weighed heavily upon me. I stood watching the minute hand of my watch creep toward midnight. Then something happened in the alcove. I did not see the candle go out. I simply turned and saw that the darkness was there as one might start and see the unexpected presence of a stranger. The black shadow had sprung back to its place. By jove, said I allowed recovering from my surprise, That draft's a strong one. Taking the matchbox from the table, I walked across the room in a leisurely manner to relight the corner again. I get the impression that was a forced leisurely manner, don't you?

Yeah, like, Oh, I'm fine, everybody.

My first match would not strike. As I succeeded with the second, something seemed to blink on the wall before me. I turned my head involuntarily and saw that the two candles on the little table by the fireplace were extinguished. I rose at once to my feet. 'Od, ' I said. Did I do that myself in a flash of absent-mindedness? I walked back, relit one, and as I did so, I saw the candle in the right sconce of one of the mirrors wink and go right out. Almost immediately, its companion followed it. The flames vanished as if the wick had been suddenly nipped between a finger and thumb, leaving the wick neither glowing nor smoking but black. While I stood gaping, the candle at the foot of the bed went up and the shadows seemed to take another step toward me.

For the record, I think that little bit with the candle going out but no smoke or no glow, I think that's legit, the scariest line in this thing.

Yeah, it was a really good little thing. Little detail. -detail, that's what I was after. This won't do, said I, and first one and then another candle on the mantle shell followed. What's up? I cried with a queer high note. Sorry. What's up? I cried with a queer high note getting into my voice somehow. At that, the candle on the corner of the wardrobe went out and the one I had relit in the alcove followed. Study on, I said. Those candles are wanted, speaking with a half hysterical facetiousness and scratching away at a match all the while for the mantle candlesticks. My hands trembled so much that twice I missed the rough paper of the matchbox. As the mantle emerged from darkness again, two candles in the remoter end of the room were eclipsed. But with the same match, I also relit the larger mirror candles and those on the floor near the doorway so that for a moment, I seemed to gain on the extinctions. But then in a noiseless volly, there vanished four lights at once in different corners of the room. I struck another match in a quivering haste and stood hesitating whether to take it.

This is really scary at this point. I can picture this happening.

Yeah, I mean, think about it. The whole reason he went and gathered 17 candles is because he didn't want any darkness in there. Now, something, it seems, is extinguishing these candles all over the room while he's trying to get them relit. I would be flipping out at this point.

Yeah, and that one little detail, too. H. E. Wells. Good writer. When he's trying to strike the match, but he's on the smooth part of the box.

That's good stuff. Yeah, everybody's been there.

Switcheroo? Yeah. I think Switcheroo for sure.

All right. As I stood undecided, an invisible hand seemed to sweep out the two candles on the table. With a cry of terror, I dashed at the alcove. You can do the cry of terror.

Then into the corner... Then the cry of terror.

Oh, goodness. Then into the corner and then into the window, relighting three as two more vanished by the fireplace, and then perceiving a better way, I dropped matches on the iron bound deed box in the corner and caught up the bedroom candlestick. What is he doing there?

I don't quite follow that. He's basically forgotten the matches. Now he's just going to use a candle.

Oh, yeah, we're all going to move. With this, I avoided the delay of... Okay, I just should have kept reading. With this, I avoided the delay of striking matches, but for all that the steady process of extinction went on and the shadows I feared and fought against returned and crept in upon me. First, a step gained on this side of me, then on that. I was now almost frantic with the horror of the coming darkness and my self-possession deserded me. I leaped, panting from candle to candle in a vain struggle against that remorseless advance. I bruised myself in the thigh against the table. I sent a chair headlong. I stumbled and fell and whisked the cloth from the table in my fall. This guy is like three stitches episode all of a sudden. My candle rolled away from me and I snatched another as I rose. Abruptly, this was blown out as I swung it off the table by the wind of my sudden movement, and immediately the two remaining candles followed. But there was light still in the room, a red light that streamed across the ceiling and staved off the shadows.

From the fire.

Of course, I could still thrust my candle between the bars and relight it. I turned to where the flames were still dancing between the glowing coals and splashing red reflections upon the furniture, made two steps toward the gate and incontinently? Yeah.

Did he poop himself? Or peed, one of the two.

Okay. Incontinently, the flames dwindled and vanished. The glow vanished. The reflections rushed together and disappeared. As I thrust the candle between the bars, darkness closed upon me like the shutting of an eye, wrapping around me in a stifling embrace, sealed my vision and crushed the last vestages of self-possession from my brain. It was not only palpable darkness, but intolerable terror. The candle fell from my hands. I flung up my arms in a vain effort to thrust that ponderous blackness away from me and lifting up my voice, screamed with all of my might once, twice, thrice. Then I think I must have staggered to my feet. I know I thought suddenly of the moonlit corridor. With my head bowed and my arms over my face made a stumbling run for the door. But I had forgotten the exact position of the door and I struck myself heavily against the corner of the bed. I staggered back, turned, and was either struck or struck myself against some other bulky furnishing. I have a vague memory of battering myself thus to and from in the darkness of a heavy blow at last upon my forehead of a horrible sensation of falling that lasted an age, of my last frantic effort to keep my footing.

And then I remember no more.

Boy, that's some good foley work right there, my friend.

Thank you. I would say I was practicing, but this is all just off the cuff.

All right. So this guy, a key detail there is like, I either struck myself or was struck. I'm like, That's a key.

Detail, bro. For sure. But for all intents and purposes, it does not matter at this point because he's been knocked out. Frankly, I think we have a little bit of detail about what happened to that Earl, that count who fell headlong out of the door, right?

Yeah. I think I see where.

This is headed. You ready? I'm taking it home.

Take it home, baby. I opened my.

Eyes in daylight. My head was roughly bandaged and the man with the withered hand was watching my face. I looked about me trying to remember what had happened, and for a space I could not recollect. I rolled my eyes into the corner and saw the old woman no longer abstracted, no longer terrible, pouring out some drops of medicine from a little blue file into a glass. Where am I? I said. I seem to remember you, and yet I cannot remember who you are. They told me then, and I heard of the haunted room as one hears a tale. Let's see, I think this is the old man with the withered arm? Yeah. We found you at dawn, said he, and there was blood on your forehead and lips. I wondered that I had ever disliked him. The three of them in the daylight seemed commonplace old folk enough. The man with the green shade had his head bent as one who sleeps. It was very slowly I recovered the memory of my experience. You believe now? Said the old man with the withered hand, That the room is haunted? He spoke no longer as one who greets an intruder, but as one who condols with the friend.

Yes, said I. The room is haunted and you have seen it and we who have been here all our lives have never set eyes upon it because we've never dared. Tell us, is it truly the old Earl who? No, said I, It is not.

I told you so.

Said the old lady with the glass in her hand.

It is his poor young countess who is frightened.

It is not, I said. There is neither Ghost of Earl nor Ghost of Countess in that room. There is no ghost there at all. But worse, far worse. Something impalpable.

Well. Not bad.

The worst of all the things that haunt poor, mortal men, said I, and that is in all its nakedness, fear.

Fear. It will not have light nor sound, that will not bear with reason, that deafens and darkens and overwhelms. It followed me through the corridor. It fought against me in the room. I stopped abruptly. There was an interval of silence. My hand wrote up to my bandages. The candles went out one after another, and I fled. Then the man with the shade lifted his face sideways to see me and spoke.

That.

Is it, said he.

I knew that was it, a power of darkness.

Is he Sean.

Connery all of a sudden? I think so. Sean Connery and James Earl Jones had a baby, and this guy is it.

A power of darkness to put such a curse upon a home, it lurks there always. You can feel it even in the daytime, even of a bright summer's day, in the hangings, in the curtains, keeping behind you however you face about. In the dust, it creeps in the corridor and follows you so that you dare not turn. It is even as you say, fear itself is in that room. Black fear. And there it will be so long as this House of Sin endures..

Wow, Ozy. Wow, Zor, wow, Zor.

You really finished that in grand style, man. That was great stuff.

Thanks, dude. Man, H. G. Wells, that is no wonder he was a popular writer.

That's good stuff. Still is popular. We just brought him back, buddy.

Yeah.

So I guess we should take a message break, huh?

No, no. Not for Halloween.

That never gets old for me. I think I say that every year.

Yeah.

I love it. So, yeah, I guess then we'll move on to the next one. This is your pick, right?

Yeah. This is called The Misinthrope by JD Barrisford. You'll see what's going on here. It's got to do with a lot of these stories are the same, I feel like.

Yeah.

Horror writing back then, these short stories often had to do with people investigating some creepy place where something creepy had happened, or maybe that's all horror movies.

And they were usually approaching it from a rational mind, and they end up being proven that there's something worse there. Yeah.

It's good stuff. All right.

It works.

So what am I.

Doing again? I'm the visitor to the island in the Boatman, and.

You're the hermit. Okay, that's right. Right? Why do we bother working.

This out? I don't know.

I always forget. All right, here we go, everybody. Poor up a spoopy drink, blow out the candles, relight them, blow them out again, and listen to The Misinthrope by J. D. Barrisford. Take it away, Josh.

Did you say spoopy? Very nice.

Since I.

Have returned from the rock and discussed the story and all its bearings, I've begun to wonder if the man made a fool of me. In the depths of my consciousness, I feel that he did not. Nevertheless, I cannot resist the effect of all the laughter that has been evoked by my narrative. Here on the mainland, the whole thing seems unlikely, grotesque, foolish. On the rock, the man's confession carried absolute conviction. The setting is everything, and I am perhaps thankful that my present circumstances are so beautifully conducive to sanity. No one appreciates the mystery of life more than I do. But when the mystery involves such a doubt of oneself, I find it pleasender to forget. Naturally, I do not want to believe the story. If I did, I should know myself to be some human horror. The terror of it all lies in the fact that I may never know precisely what kind. Before I went, we had eliminated the facile and banal explanation that the man was mad and had fallen back upon two inevitable alternatives: crime and disappointed love. We were human and romantic, and we tried desperately hard not to be too obvious.

That is the most inscrutable paragraph I've ever read in my entire life.

Once.

Before, a man had made the same attempt and had built or tried to build a house on the Golan Rock, but he had been defeated within a fortnight, and what was left of his building was taken off the island and turned into a tin church. It is there still. We all went to Trevon and ruminated over and around it, perhaps with some faint hope that one of us might, all unknowing, have the abilities of a psychometrist. I think what he's saying, there's something on this island that he's very interested in. There's a person that he's trying to figure out what their deal is. They're so into it that he and his group of friends went to visit this 10 church that had once been a house on this island for two weeks, just in an effort to glean some information, even psychic information, if possible.

Yeah, and he's recounting this. He's recounting something that has already happened to him that he's very embarrassed about.

Yes. We both read this already, and I can promise you, everybody, it gets more comprehensible as things go on. As a matter of fact, we should probably reread this beginning at the end, so we'll both be like, Oh, okay, I get it.

Yeah, it makes sense. It's like the movie that picks up with the guy that all the stuff has already happened. And then he's like, And here's.

The story. Yeah, but at the beginning of Sunset Boulevard, no one's like, What are you talking about? I'm not talking about. This story doesn't fall into that same category. Okay, here I go. Nothing came of that visit. This is the visit to that 10 church, but a slight intensification of those theories that were already becoming a little stale. We compared the early failure of 30 years ago, the attempt that was baffled with the present success. For this new misenthope had lived on the Golan through the whole winter and still lived. Indeed, the fact of his presence on that awful lump of rock was now accepted by the country people. To them, he was scarcely as shade matter than the other visitors. That renumerative recurrent host that this year broke their journey to Bedworthin in order to stand on the Trevon Beach and stare foolishly at just the visible hut that struck like a cubicle gall on the landward face of that hump, desolate island. The best I can tell is there's somebody who lives there now, this hermit, you, on this island. The country people who live on the mainland just off of the island or whatever, they don't think too much of him, but they can see his hut from their house on the mainland.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

You want to take over? You want me to keep reading a jumble of words that barely make sense?

I'll take over. Okay. All right. We all did that, stare at nothing in particular and meditated enormously. But in what I felt at the time was a wild spirit of adventure, I went out one night to the point of gunver Head and saw an actual light within that distant hut, a patch of golden lichen on the mother parasite.

I like that.

Yeah, great line. Some aspect of humanity I found in that light, it was that finally decided me. That and some quality of sympathy, perhaps with the hermit, mad, criminal or lovelorn, who had found sanctuary from the pestulent touch of the encroaching crowd. It was, in fact, a wildish night. I stayed until the little yellow speck went out. All I could see through the murk was an occasional canopy of curving spray when the elbow of the Trevon Light touched a bare corner of that black gulland. This guy's just watching this island as well, but he feels a little empathy maybe.

Toward this guy. Yeah, it sounds like it.

The making of a decision was no difficult matter, but while I waited for the necessary calm that would permit the occasional boat to land provisions on the island two miles out from the mainland, I suffered qualms of doubt and nervousness, and I suffered them alone for I had determined that no hint of my adventure should be given to any one of our party until the voyage had been made. They might think that I had gone fishing, an excuse which had all the air probability given to it by the coming of the boatman to say that the tide and wind would serve that morning. I had warned and bribed him to give no clue to my friends of the goal of my proposed excursion. This guy is going to go out there on a boat, but he's like, Don't tell anyone I'm.

Doing this. He's ditching his friends.

Ditching his friends. My nervousness suffered no decrease as we approached the rock and saw the authentic figure of its single inhabit, awaiting our arrival. I had some consolation in the thought that he would be in some way prepared by the sight of our surprisingly passenger boat, but my mind shuttered at the necessity for using some conventional form of address if I would make at once my introduction and excuse. The civilized opening was so helplessly incapable of expressing my sympathy, presenting instead so unmistakably, it seemed to me, the single solution of common curiosity. I wondered that he had not, as the boatman so clearly assured me was the case, had other prying visitors before me. My self-consciousness increased as we came near to the single opening among the spiked rocks that served as a miniature harbor at half tide. I felt that I was being watched by the man who now stood awaiting us at Water's Edge. Suddenly, my spirit broke. I decided that I could not force myself upon him, that I would remain in the boat while its cargo was delivered and then return with the boatman to Trivone. So resolution was I in this plan that when we had pulled into the tiny landing space, I kept my gaze steadfastly averted from the man I had come to see and stared solemnly out at the hump back of Trivone, now seen in an entirely new aspect.

All right, so this guy is having second thoughts now. He's like, I'm already out here and maybe I should just go back.

Yeah, maybe I shouldn't force myself on a hermit who I want to find out what's your deal, man.

Yeah, exactly. Why don't you take over because there's a lot of me stuff.

Okay. The sound of the hermit's voice startled me from a perfectly genuine abstraction.

Fairly decent weather today?

He remarked with, I thought, a touch of nervousness. He had, I remembered, addressed the same remark to the boatmen who were now conveying their cargo up to the hut. I looked up and met his stare. He was indeed regarding me with a curious effect of concentration as if he were eager to know every detail of my expression. Jolly, I replied. Been pretty beastly the last day or two. Kept you rather short, hasn't it?

I make allowances for that.

He said.

Keep a reserve, you know. Are you, I, staying over there?

He nodded towards the bay for a week or two, I told him, as we began to discuss the country around Harlan with the eagerness of two strangers who find a common topic at a dull reception.

Never been on the gull before, I suppose.

He ventured at last when the boatmen had discharged their load and were evidently ready to be off. Gross. No, no, no, no, I haven't, I said and hesitated. I felt the invitation must come from him. He boggled over it by saying.

Dashed awkward place to get to and nothing to see, of course. I don't know if you're at all keen on fishing.

Well, rather, I said with enthusiasm.

There's deep water on the other side of the rock.

He went on.

In the right weather, you get splendid bass there.

He stopped and then added.

It will be absolutely top old for him this afternoon.

Well, perhaps I could come back, I began. But the boatman interrupted me at once.

Is this Josh Clark that's visiting this guy? It sounds very much like this is something you would do.

All right. You can come back tomorrow, sure enough, he said. Tide only serves once every 12 hours.

If you'd care to stay now, so.

Thanks. That's awfully good of you. I should like to, of all things, I said. I stayed on the clear understanding that the boatmen were to fetch me the next morning. At first, there was really very little that seemed in any way strange about the man on the gulland.

I can picture what happened here. He's like, Yeah, I'll stay. Then he turns around and he's like, You'll get me tomorrow, right? He's like, Yeah, this will be great. We'll do this and fishing. You guys are coming right in the morning, right?

They're like, Sure, we'll be right back. His name, he told me, was William Coplay. But it appeared that he was no relation to the Copays I knew. If he had shaved, he would have looked a very ordinary type of Englishman, roughing it on a holiday. His age, I'd judge to be between 30 and 40. Only two things about him struck me as a little queer during our very successful afternoons fishing. The first was that intense appraising stare of his as if he tried to fathom the very depths of one's being. The second was an inexplicable devotion to one particular form of ceremony. As our intimacy grew, he dropped the ordinary form of politeness of a host. But he insisted always on one observance that I suppose at first to be the merely conventional business of giving precedents. Nothing would induce him to go in front of me. He sent me ahead even as we explored the little pearliest of his rock. The only level square yard on the whole island was in the floor of the hut. But presently, I noticed that this peculiarity went still further and that he would not turn his back on me for a single moment.

This is weird. Yeah, it is weird. But the hermit, 30s, 40s, all he needs to do is shave. He's just a normal person. But the one thing about him is that he will not let that guy get behind him no matter what.

Yeah, I get it.

Okay. I think if anything, him having that weird quirk would be expected. It was him being just totally normal was the unexpected part.

Yeah, that's what I agree. I agree with that.

Well, it's.

You, buddy. Yeah, okay. That discovery intrigued one. I still excluded the explanation of madness. Coppley's manner and conversation were so convincingly sane. But I reverted to and elaborated those other two suggestions that had been made. I could not avoid the inference that the man must, in some strange way, be afraid of me. I hesitated as to whether he were flying from some form of justice or from revenge, perhaps a venetta. Either theory seemed to account for his intense appraising stare. I inferred that his longing for companionship had grown so strong that he had determined to risk the possibility of my being an emissary sent by some, to me, exquisitely romantic person or persons who desired Coppley's death. Oh, man. I know. I recalled and wallowed in some of the marvelous imaginings of the novelist. I wondered if I could make Coppley speak by convincing him of my innocent identity, how I thrilled at the prospect. This guy is just like, Oh, maybe he thinks I'm an assassin and maybe I can convince him that I'm not. That'll be fun.

Right. Maybe that'll get me some currency with him if I convince him I'm not here to kill him.

But the explanation of it all came without any effort on my part. He sent me out of the hut while he prepared our supper. Quite a magnificent meal, by the way. I saw his reason at once. He could not manage all of that business of cooking and laying the table without turning his back on me. One thing, however, puzzled me a little. He drew down the blind of the little square window as soon as I had gone outside. Naturally, I made no demure. I climbed down to the edge of the sea. It was a glorious evening and waited until he called me. He stood at the door of the hut until I was within a few feet of him and then retreated into the room and sat down with his back to the wall. We discussed our afternoon sport as we had supper. But when we had finished and our pipes were going, he said suddenly.

I don't see why I shouldn't tell you.

Like a fool, I agreed eagerly when I might so easily have stopped him.

It began when I was quite a kid.

He said.

My mother found me crying in the garden and all I could tell her was that Claude, my elder brother, looked horrid. I couldn't bear the sight of him for days afterward either, but I was such a perfectly normal child that they weren't seriously perturbed about this one idiosyncrasy of mine. They thought that Claude had made a face at me and frightened me. My father whacked me for it eventually.

I'm playing this guy older than 35 years old, I realize.

He's just morphed into Hannah B. Lector.

Okay. Fly, fly, Claris.

Perhaps.

That whacking stuck in my mind. Anyway, I didn't confide my peculiarity to anyone until I was nearly 17. I was ashamed of it, of course. I still am in a way.

He stopped and looked down, pushed his plate away from him and folded his arms on the table. I was pining to ask a question, but I was afraid to interrupt. After a moment's hesitation, he looked up and held my gaze again. But now, without that inquiring look of his, rather, he seemed to be looking for sympathy.

I told my housemaster, he said.

It.

He was a splendid chap and he was very decent about it, took it all quite seriously and advised me to consult an occultist, which I did. I went in the holidays with the painter. I had given him a more reasonable account of my trouble, and he took me to the best man in London. He was tremendously interested, and it proves that there must be something in it.

That.

It can't be imagination, because he really found a defect in my eyes. Something quite new to him, he said. He called it a new form of astigmatism. But of course, as he pointed out, no glasses would be of any use to me.

I.

Began unable to keep down my curiosity any longer. Cookeley hesitated and dropped his eyes.

Astigmatism, you know?.

He said.

Is it defect? I quote the dictionary. I learn that definition by heart. I often puzzle over it still, causing images of lines having a certain direction to be distinctly seen, while those of lines transverse to the former are distinctly seen. Only mine is peculiar in the fact that my sight is perfectly normal, except when I look back at anyone over my shoulder. He looked up almost pathetically.

All right, so this guy is getting the truth out of him. This guy's got something wrong with his eyes.

Yes, and he found out that there actually is something wrong with it because he got his dad to take him to essentially, I guess, a psychic or something in London.

The deal is, though, is the guy, when he looks over his shoulder at somebody, something's up.

Right.

Which is why I didn't want anyone behind him.

Yeah.

Okay, take it away.

I could see that he hoped I might understand without further explanation. I had to confess myself utterly mystified. What had this trifling defect of vision to do with his coming to live on the Gulland? I wondered. I frowned my perplexity. I don't see. I said, He knocked out his pipe and began to scrape the bowl with his pocket knife.

Well, mine is a more realisticism, too.

He said.

At least it gives me a.

Moral insight.

I'm afraid I must call it insight. There are some who call me Tim. I proved in some cases that...

He dropped his voice. He was apparently deeply engrossed in the scraping out of his pipe. He kept his eyes on it as he continued.

Normally, you understand when I look at people straight in the face, I see them as anybody else sees them. But when I look back at them over my shoulder, I see all their vices and defects. Their faces remain, in a sense, the same perfectly recognizable, I mean, but distorted, beastly. There was my brother, Claude. Good looking chap, he was. But when I saw him that way, he had a nose like a parrot, and he looked weakly, veracious, and vicious.

He stopped and shuttered slightly and then added.

And no one knows now that he is like that too. He's just been hammered on the stock exchange. Rotten failure it was.

This guy, he's explaining about his brother.

Yes.

He looks like a creep.

Right. He looked at him over his shoulder and saw his brother looking really weird.

Yeah, like his true self, basically.

Then Denison, my housemaster, such a decent chap. I never looked at him that way until the end of my last term at school. I had got into the habit, more or less, of never looking over my shoulder, you see. But I was always getting caught.

That was an instance.

I was playing for the school against the old boys. Denison called out.

Good luck, old chap.

Just as I was going in and I forgot and looked.

Back at him. Hey, that was a flashback. Nice work.

On.

The fly.

Go ahead. Oh, am I narrating? That's right. I waited breathless, and as he did not go on, I prompted him with… Was he… Was he wrong to? Coplay nodded.

Weak, poor devil. His eyes were all right, but they were fighting his mouth, if you know what I mean.

I have no.

Idea what that means. I looked it up. I can't find any explanation of that whatsoever. No, we don't know what you mean, William Coplay.

I think he just means he looked funny or something.

I guess. But I feel like he's talking about a specific way that he looked funny.

Well, he says, if you know what I mean, your guy should say, Nobody knows what you mean.

Right. Here, I'll add that line. Okay.

They were fighting his mouth, if you know what I mean.

I feel like nobody knows what you mean.

Oh, man, you're really milking this one.

There would have been an awful scandal at that school there four years after I left if they hadn't hushed it up and got Denison out of the country.

Still no idea what was wrong.

With Denison. Yeah, I think it's one of those things left unsaid.

Then if.

You want any more instances, there was the occultist, big, fine chap he was. Of course, he made me look at him over my shoulder to test me, and I told, more or less. He was simply livid for a moment. He was a sensualist, you see. When I saw him that way, he looked like some filthy old hog.

I realized my accent is completely different than the beginning. But it's.

Very pleasing. I was going to tell you you're doing a great job.

With this. I found it, but he's morphed.

Yeah, but that's what happens. He's evolved. That's right.

The thing that really finished me….

He went back to the beginning.

Okay.

Keep narrating, though.

He went on after a long interval.

Was the breaking off of my engagement to Helen. We were frightfully in love with one another, and I told her about my trouble. She was very sympathetic and, I suppose, rather sentimentally romantic, too. She believed it was some spell that had been put on me. I think anyway, she had a theory that if I once saw anybody truly and ordinarily over my shoulder, I should never have any more trouble. The spell would be broken thing. And of course, she wanted to be the person. I didn't resist her much. I was infatuated, I suppose. Anyway, I thought she was perfection and that it was simply impossible that I could find any defect in her. So I agreed and looked that way.

His voice had fallen to an even note of despondency, as though the telling of this final tragedy in his life had brought him to the indifferent of despair.

I looked.

He continued.

And saw a creature with no chin and watery, doting eyes, a fateful, slobbery thing. I can't... I never spoke to her again.

That broke me, you know?.

He said presently.

After that, I didn't care. I used to look at everyone that way until I had to get away from humanity. I was living in a world of beasts. Most of them look like some beast or bird or other. The strong were more vicious and criminal, and the weak were loathsome. I couldn't stick it. In the end, I had to come.

Here away.

From them all.

A thought occurred to me.

Have.

You ever looked at yourself in the glass? I asked. He nodded.

Are you drawing with your toe and the sand in front of him? Very batchful.

I'm no better than the rest of them.

He said.

That's why I grew this rotten beard. I hadn't got a looking glass here.

You can't keep up a stiff neck, as it were? I asked. Going about looking at humanity just straight in the face.

The temptation is too.

Strong, Coplay said.

And it gets stronger. Curiosity, partly, I suppose, but partly it's the momentary sense of superiority it gives you. You see them like that and forget how you look yourself, and then after a bit, it sickenes you.

You haven't, I said, and hesitated. I wanted to know, and yet I was horribly afraid. You haven't, I began again. Or you have or have you let me figure out how to say this. Have have you looked at me that way?

Not yet.

He said. Do you?

Do you suppose?

Probably. You look all right, of course, but then so did heaps of the others.

Oh, man. So you have no idea. None. How I should look to you that way?

Absolutely none. I've been trying to guess, but I can't.

Oh, man. You wouldn't, you know... You wouldn't care.

Not now.

He said sharply.

Perhaps just before you go?

(coughing) You feel fairly certain then? He nodded with disgusting conviction. I went to bed wondering whether Helen's theory wasn't a true one and if I might not break the spell for poor old Copeland. The boatman came for me soon after 11:00 the next morning. I had shaken off some of the feeling of superstitious horror that held me overnight. I had not repeated my request to Coply, nor had he offered to look into the dark places of my soul. He came down after me to the landing place and we shook hands warmly, but he said nothing about my revisiting him. Then just as we were putting off, he turned backward toward the hut and looked at me over his shoulder. Just one quick glance. Hold on, hold on. Wait, I commanded the boatman, and I stood up and called to him. Oh, Coppoli, I shouted. He turned and looked at me and I saw that his face was transfigured. He wore an expression of foolish, disgust and loathing. I had seen something like it on the face of a child who was just going to be sick.

Oh, boy.

I dropped down into the boat and turned my back on him. I wondered then if that was how he had seen himself in the glass. But since, I have only wondered what it was he saw in me. And I can never go back to ask him.

Pretty.

Great stuff.

Yeah, tortuous ending, though.

For sure.

But I mean-It plays out nicely, cinematically.

For sure. I mean, isn't not knowing the most horrible thing of all?

Well, yeah, especially when you see Copley turn around and look and then look like a kid that's about to puke.

Yeah, what would have been greater is if he just bent over and started puking after seeing it?

Right, yeah. All over the rock.

Right. Yeah. Man, I feel like we should make a second career of punching up old short stories and making them better.

Yeah. All right? Yeah, I think it's a good market in that.

Those painters that go around and find yard sale paintings and then paint stuff in them.

Yeah, let's do it.

Okay, speaking of let's do it, Chuck, I say that this Halloween spectacular has come to an end, don't you?

Yeah, this has been great fun, my friend. This is always one of the more fun episodes that we do along with our Christmas special. We have a lot of fun doing these. You did a great, great job this year.

As.

Did you. Thank you.

Happy Halloween, everybody. From Chuck and me and Jerry, from Ben, from Dave, from Dave, from Olivia, from Ed, from the whole crew, here at Stuff You Should Know. Stay safe and be goulish.

Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts, iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.