Ad Nauseam | CreepCast

27:08It was sizzling. She set it on the oven, didn't flinch, didn't move a goddamn muscle. She was like, mmm, Canadian bacon. She did, never touched the pizzas once. Only the cookie sheet. She left her fingers and said she touched it. she was just drunk out of her mind out of her gourd gosh hey rip to her too though dude she's gone she actually uh she visited me in my dream she said I got like tons of pussy and stuff opposite of Isaiah okay you should learn something from your friend

27:49you know it's funny I've told like 10 people that story and everyone's like, that's so sweet. And then you come along. You gotta be misremembering, dude. He said some fucked up. Yeah, all right, all right. A few days passed with the persistent sounds. I would have forgotten about it had I not opened my eyes late one night. I had just heard the creaking sound and I rolled over to look across the bed. Saw another person right next to me. My heart leapt into my throat and my stomach sank. She was facing away from me and her long hair ran down her back. She was wearing a white nightgown. I laid on the bed paralyzed and watched her, too afraid to move, too afraid to scream.

28:32She walked back and forth for a few minutes before getting up slowly. The bed creaked as she moved into a sitting position. She had her hands in front of her face. She sat in that position for a few minutes before she got up and moved towards the door. She moved slowly. when she reached the door her hand extended towards the doorknob she didn't open it just phased through the door and it moved slightly with her passing through it i didn't sleep for the rest of the night that's interesting all the sounds you heard the creaking on the bed the door bumping is her doing that same path every night when was the nightgown early 1900s i mean that's been traditionally a thing for probably several centuries but They kind of phased out of popularity around early 1900s, I'd say.

29:25At what point did they stop shifting from nightgowns to, I don't know, somebody would see it like Walmart with Cookie Monster sweatpants? Cookie Monster sweatpants came later. You know what I'm talking about, though? Yeah. You think it's 100 years from now? It's just like, yeah, I woke up and there was a morbidly obese woman with Cookie Monster sweatpants and a Captain America shirt. She phased to the door. I'm saying there's got to be, at a point, there's going to be a shift. I feel like we should cut this, but I imagine there's a lot of fellas waking up to that right now.

30:04As I roll around on the floor like fucking, what's that fucking slug? Gorb Galapur, what the fuck is that? I am the Gorb Galapur, whatever the fuck it is.

30:20Yeah, somebody's listening with their AirPods, they just look over next to them. Oh, damn. It's a single tear. Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom.

30:31I spent the next couple of nights sleeping upstairs in the guest room. I lied and told my parents that it was too cold downstairs. I knew I couldn't tell them what I saw. They were already worried about my adjustment to a new city. They didn't need to think that I was going crazy. I stayed in the guest room for a few nights before they began to get suspicious and started asking if anything was wrong. I went to bed in my room the next night, and I saw her again. I didn't just see her. I heard her as well. I tried to stay up that night, but I eventually drifted off. As I was about to really go under, I became aware.

31:08I was just like, boo-doo-doo! He's in Russ Ronald all the time I'm trying to find my fault like whispering Like we can hear all of it dude Like He's like oh god it's a monkey I mean I've been ignoring it but it sounds like I can't I've tried to It sounds like a raccoon going through a trash can

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34:37As I was about to really go under, I became aware of a sound softly repeating in my room. I opened my eyes, and she was there in my bed. She was still rocking slightly, and I realized what a sound I was hearing. She was crying softly. She was doing her best to stifle her sobs, but they were just barely audible. I should have been scared, but as I listened to her pitiful bawling, I felt nothing but sympathy. She rose to a sitting position and wept for a few minutes before leaving my room. I managed to go to sleep a few hours later on the floor next to my bed. The idea of waking up in the middle of the night and seeing her facing me, dead eyes looking right into mine, was a terrifying thought.

35:23She didn't seem to be aware that there was someone else in bed with her, and I had no intention of making her aware of my presence. I slept on the uncomfortable floor in front of the heater the rest of the night. She appeared every night in my room for the next week. She always repeated the same motions. At the end of the week, I decided to try and make contact with her. I was beginning to feel like a voyeuristic creep watching her at her most raw and unguarded moment. She appeared, let her cry for a few minutes, before slowly reaching out my hand. My trembling hand slowly crept across the bedsheets.

36:02I was terrified that I might get her attention and provoke her wrath. I drew closer and closer to her shoulder. I blew out a laden sigh and reached forward only to see my fingers slid right through her. It was the oddest sensation I ever experienced in my life. My mind told me that I wasn't feeling anything, but it still felt like I had touched her. Later, when I was older, I would come across an article explaining phantom limb syndrome. It talked about how amputees would sometimes feel sensations in their lost limb, despite the fact that it was no longer there. I think that's the closest analogy I can come up with.

36:40I was feeling something that was not there. Or at least, no longer there. It's like when you play VR games and when you get hurt, you feel it in real life. It's like Phantom Pain. Phantom Pain. Like Metal Gear Solid V. It's like when I'm in a VR chat room. You can say my name! It's like when I'm in a VR chat room and someone walks through me and it hurts extremely bad.

37:11My attempt at contact galvanized me. I shot out of the bed and walked around to the other side. She had just risen to a sitting position and was now facing me. She was a few years older than me. If I had a guess, I would say she was 16 or 17. She had relatively plain features, but there is an endearing quality to her simple style. I was shocked and a little embarrassed to be thinking of her like that. I was busy mentally castigating myself when she stood up and moved right through me. If trying to touch her was discomforting, feeling her pass through me was the oddest sensation I ever felt. I had to sit down and catch my breath and still my heart.

37:52The next night I tried to make contact again, but met with the same results. instead of watching her leave the room and make the sound of the door bumping against its frame i decided that i had to follow her i had to figure out what happened to her she moved slowly through the basement but wasn't heading in the direction of the stairs she was instead heading towards the boiler room i followed her to the door but as soon as i got within reach of the handle i felt my blood turned cold my skin prickled she phased through the door and i stood outside i was afraid of what might happen to me when I entered that room.

38:29I was more worried what I would find when there. I didn't enter the boiler room until a week before class began. I won't lie, those first few months in Kalamazoo, Michigan were some of the loneliest of my life. My friends back in Simsbury, Connecticut were moving on with their lives and I felt like I was being left behind, left alone. I didn't have any friends in Kalamazoo yet and to tell you the truth, I was beginning to see this nightly ray as a companion, kindred spirit. She was alone and sad, just like me. Every night, I would wake up to the sound of her suffering and I would follow her to the boiler room.

39:08A week before class began for me, I entered the boiler room with her. I'd stood outside the door for a few minutes, trying to steel myself for what I might see. My entire body was screaming at me to run back to my room and never go near that boiler room again. but I had to know what happened next. I drew in a deep breath and blew it out. I grasped the doorknob and turned it. The door swung into the room and I was at eye level with her feet. I swayed back and forth like a pendulum powered by her frantic kicking in an attempt to find some purchase. I stifled the scream when I realized that she wasn't levitating like a ghost.

39:50She was hanging from a beam in the ceiling. so clearly she took her own life yes when she was actually alive yeah when this house was older she was depressed and then one night couldn't take it anymore went to the boiler room and did that do you think that she's depressed and like she's just reenacting it or do you think that she's depressed from the aftermath i think since it's the same effect over and over it's like a death echo like someone reliving oh yeah yeah life over right they're just on repeat yeah like a cycle of sorts. I left the room and went back to my bed. There was nothing more I could do and I had no intention of spending any more time than necessary in that boiler room.

40:28I laid in bed and slowly curled up into a fetal position. I prided myself in not being the kind of person who cried openly, but at that moment, the floodgates broke and I wept. My throat felt raw and my eyes stung with tears. I sobbed for a few moments before I realized I was not alone. She was in bed across for me and weeping in that same position she had always been in i tried to find out who she was but the realtor was tight-lipped about the house's previous occupants and wasn't interested in chatting i pressed her for more information and she finally caved and confessed to not really knowing too much about the house's history i went to the library i failed to do what it's just funny it's like i pressed the realtor she didn't know anything all right fine i don't know nothing you know what i mean it's like why would you not just say that fine i'll talk i'm not sure

41:22i went to the library but i failed to turn up any information when reading a book on the history of the area i even tried asking the neighbors about the previous owners but the two families that lived there before ours didn't have a daughter or only had an infant daughter when they occupied the house i had no idea about the girl who appeared every night and hung herself in the boiler room. It was now a routine for me. I'd wake up in the middle of the night around the time she would appear. I'm ashamed to admit it, but sometimes I found myself waiting for her. I was hopeful that someday I would break through and tell her what I had wanted to say ever since I saw her.

41:58I would tell her that she didn't deserve the fate she was suffering. I would tell her how lonely I was, how desperate I was for someone to talk to. I would tell her, I don't know. I always stayed behind when she left the room. I had walked into the boiler room during the day once, and I saw her hanging there. She was gasping and clawing desperately at her neck as she slowly asphyxiated. She rocked back and forth in the room, and her feet frantically kicked around, looking for some purchase to save herself. I did scream then. I had to make up a story about seeing a shadow for my mom when she came up downstairs and saw me pale as a ghost and shivering.

42:35I started class and began to make some new friends. I even had a few classmates over to hang out. I remember one time we were playing a video game and the girl passed right through him on her way to the boiler room. My friends couldn't see her nor my parents. Only I could. I wondered for a bit if I was going crazy and that was why only I could see her. But I'm not sure that's the case. Well, at least not going crazy back then. She was repeating, always reliving her last moments she would start out weeping on the bed then she would rise to a sitting position for a bit before going to the boiler room and hanging herself this happened almost every night but on a few occasions i did catch her walking through the doors on the way to her demise during the day i must have seen her hundreds no thousands of times during my time in kalamazoo sometimes i would try and talk to her sometimes i would cry sometimes i would do nothing It took me a few years to try and figure it all out, but I finally did.

43:38I realized what she was doing. I realized what the afterlife was like. There isn't a heaven or a hell, at least not in the literal sense. There are only those last few moments of your life, reiterating like a broken record. She was reliving those final moments, maybe trying to make sense of it all. Maybe she wanted to choose another path, but in the end, she always came around full circle to the noose in the boiler room. This is why the concept of death scares me so much. H.P. Lovecraft said the oldest emotion is fear, and the most powerful of all fears is our fear of the unknown. I think he's wrong about that.

44:18I know what's waiting for us all when we die, and that is the scariest thought I can think of. I'm so terrified that when I die I will stay behind on this earth repeating my last moments ad nauseum trying to make sense of my last minutes this is what is waiting for us all after it is all said and done and I know that the end is inevitably approaching the end of ad nauseum do you think that these stories are going to be connected through yeah I think it's going to be the same person do you mean the same ghost or is it just going to be this is his encounter with this it's probably going to be different encounters if i had to guess um so the title ad nauseum at mortem ad infinum is kind of the idea that like again with what we said it being like you know to the point of sickness to the point of death forever it's like repeating your last moments on and on and on without fail um so i think we're going to see other examples of that seems like also this concept of the afterlife that he's saying almost feels like a purgatory.

45:23Like our definition of purgatory. Reliving their kind of existing in this state of just like perpetual scared me.

45:36Knocking over that toilet really got to you, huh? This tiny little toilet. Ew, what the fuck? Oh my god, it's a skibbity toilet. No, it's not. It is. It is a skibbity toilet. Look at that. Can his head not pop out? You have to hit the flusher.

46:01Well, the flusher pushes him down. What? Is there a button or a lever somewhere to make him go? Oh, at the base of the toilet. That is the scariest thing that's happened since we got here. That pushes his head down.

46:23what kind of monster left little sally a skippity toilet see this is the this is the cookie monster sweatpants or it's like sweatpants with a bunch of buddhas on it and it says built like a buddha or that's one of our audience members if one of our audience members left the skippity toilet scroll down a little bit

46:51all right add mortem add mortem i do agree with you about the feels like a penance yeah i thought that was kind of like his way of also adding in the ad nauseum like that's my fear of doing this ad nauseum it's kind of a fun little tie-in i'm curious to see how being stuck in that forever yeah the last moment show add mortem he's also like what like a what is it a clairvoyance is that somebody who can talk to the like clairvoyance have the natural ability to see the dead or the other side that's what i'm like wondering it seems like this character is like that kind of person yeah yeah just has the ability to yeah at mortem i was just starting my junior year in high school when my grandfather came to visit he was my father's father and he had lived in california most of his life he used to smoke like a chimney but a few years back he was diagnosed with lung cancer he was put on oxygen and had to give up smoking which did nothing to improve his cantankerous nature.

47:47He lived across the country, but had come up to Michigan to visit with my family. My relationship with my grandpa was always strained. If you wanted to be pleasant, you would say that he was an old-fashioned man. If you wanted to be honest, you would say that he was a racist and a sexist who used to beat his children when they disobeyed him. My father was always honest about how he was treated by him when he was growing up, and because I loved my father, I found my relationship with my grandfather to be adversarial. He originally had come up to visit for a week, but due to health issues, he ended up staying in Michigan for over a year to be cared for.

48:28My grandfather's extended stay only served to put a strain on our relationship. we rarely talked and when we did i managed the conversation in the coldest fashion since my grandfather was suffering from lung cancer he had to carry around an oxygen tank manufacturers must have had a sense of humor because they named the gargantuan machine the liberator the tank was 100 or so pounds and set in a corner by the entrance of the house the oxygen cord gave my grandpa 500 feet to move around the house saw the liberator as a massive ball and chain that anchored him to the guest room kitchen bathroom the dining room grandfather was suffering from lung cancer he had to take a regimen of pills to keep himself going day to day blood pressure medication bronchodilators opioids and about a dozen other supplements and vitamins the cancer had rotted away his lungs to the point that the oxygen was necessary to keep him alive he could barely move without gasping for breath, and when he talked, it came out as a rasp.

49:34The sounds of his respirator clicking on and off and his wheezing gasps became a fixture of our everyday life. We'd been living here in Kalamazoo, Michigan for about three years before my grandfather came to live with us. At this time, I was accustomed to my nocturnal, and sometimes diurnal, visitor who wept in my room before proceeding to the boiler room and hanging herself. My latest attempt to contact her was through a Ouija board. Stuck one of my friends into the house through the emergency fire escape the basement had, which was just a ladder built in an alcove that led outside. She believed that there were ghosts and that only a select few were attuned enough to see them.

50:13I didn't tell her about my encounters, only hinted that I thought there was something paranormal happening in my room. She snuck in during the night and brought her board with her. We both sat on my bed and put our hands on the Ouija board. I lit a few candles to set the mood. She said quietly, afraid to wake my parents. Spirits of this house, we beseech thee. I always wondered why people thought ghosts talk like serfs from medieval times, even if they died well after it. If you were trying to contact your loved one, would you talk to them like you were a 1920s gangster? Yeah, you see? I love you.

50:50I miss you every day, pops. She continued. If there's anyone here besides us, move the planchette and make us aware of your presence. We sat for a few moments with our fingers on the planchette. After nothing happened, she took her hands away and said, I guess the noises you've been hearing was just the house settling. Cracked a smile because out of the corner of my eyes, I could see the wraith weeping on my bed. My friend was only a few inches away from the ghostly girl who haunted the basement of my home and couldn't even see her. talked for a bit and then she left i walked her back to her house and told her good night when i snuck back into my house the sound of my grandfather's respirator filled my ears and covered up any noise i might have made sneaking into my room a couple weeks passed and my grandfather's condition deteriorated he was now confined to the guest room he barely talked and when he managed he had to pause between sentences to catch his breath sometimes when he overexerted himself, his body was wracked with congested coughs and wheezing rafs.

51:53My mother took care of him because my father was working and I was at school. Out of everyone in the house, my mother's relationship with my grandfather was probably the best. She went out and picked up his prescriptions, cooked food for him, kept in company, and changed his sheets. As per his traditionalism, he treated her more like a servant than a person. The quest were commands and demands. Despite this, my mom treated him with kindness and compassion. I remember the last time I saw my grandfather. I was getting ready for school and he was telling her that he was going to rest and asked if she could pick up his prescription.

52:31He now spent most of his time in bed and was developing bed sores and had to use a bedpan to relieve himself. He had a coughing fit and he covered his mouth with the handkerchief. I think that I saw something red staining that handkerchief, but I realized that that little observation that I make now is tainted by the memory of what happened to him later. When I returned home that day, I knew something was wrong the moment I walked through the door. There was something off about the house. There was something missing. It took me a moment to realize what it was. The house was completely quiet. The omnipresent sound of the respirator pumping oxygen was no longer present.

53:08The liberator sat in the corner, silent like the grave. I went upstairs to find my mother in the guest room, stripping the bedsheets and pillowcases. She had been crying, but wasn't at that moment. My mom didn't have to say the words, but she did anyways. He died. His heart just stopped. There's nothing that I could have done. I pulled her into a hug and she broke into a fresh set of tears. I offered to help her wash the bedsheets, but she She told me it wasn't necessary. This part may make me seem like a horrible person, but I was glad she turned down my offer. When my grandfather died, he had evacuated and the smell was horrible.

53:46She washed the sheets as best she could, but ended up throwing everything away. My father took the news like any son would take the news of his father's death. I don't know what I was expecting from him. For some reason, I thought he would be angry. Angry at the fact that his father had never told him goodbye, never told him that he loved him, or that he was proud of him. He wasn't angry, he was just quiet for a while. He didn't cry at that moment, but I remember going upstairs from the basement and hearing the soft, lush sounds of him crying in the night. I tried to take my grandfather's death as stoically as possible.

54:22I didn't cry until the funeral, and then the floodgates broke, and I wept as they lowered him in the ground. He may have been a racist, sexist, abusive old man, but he was still my grandfather. He was family, and he was gone. The worst thought I had was the realization that even though I loved my grandfather because he was family, I didn't like him. The next month was relatively quiet. My mom and dad dealt with getting his affairs in order and tending to his will. I can't tell you exactly when they started, but I can tell you when I first became aware of the sounds. I was sneaking outside at night to have a cigarette, and I thought my mind was playing tricks on me.

55:00I had become so accustomed to the sound that it took me a few seconds to realize what was wrong. I was hearing the whirring and hissing of the Liberator. We had donated the oxygen system a week ago to the nursing home. I paused in the darkened hallway and listened. It was a slow and steady sound. Listening to that noise chilled my blood and made my stomach sink. I must have stopped still and waited for that sound to stop for a few minutes. It didn't stop. If anything, the sound grew louder. I lied to myself and said it was a trick my mind was playing on me. I went downstairs back to my bedroom and passed by the ghost girl as she proceeded to her death.

55:43I kept lying to myself for the next couple of days as the noise of the liberator got progressively louder and was joined by something almost undetectable. The respirator kept going throughout the day. This wasn't like the wraith girl whose weeping only manifested at certain times. The noise was a constant, and it was growing louder. It took me a few days to really begin to hear the wheezing and gasping beneath the whirring of the Liberator. I avoided the guest room at all costs. It was quite a simple thing. There was nothing in there except for the sounds of gasping and wheezing. To be completely honest, I was afraid to enter that room.

56:19I could live with seeing the image of the girl in the basement, but I wasn't so sure I could accept seeing the ghost of my grandfather reliving his last moments. I avoided it for a few months before finally succumbing to the curiosity. It was my senior year then, and I was just wrapping up with graduation parties.

56:40Okay Sorry My dick turned it off I pressed it up against the screen You pressed the camera against your dick and it turned it off? Holy fuck, way to break the momentum that was a fucking, I was so locked in and my dick turned it off good fucking lord Just keep breathing

57:06I'm only here for a couple days I'm only here for a couple days I get to see my family again I get to see my family again There's no place like Cambuza. There's no place like Cambuza. There's no place like Columbia. There's no place like Columbia. It was my senior year then, and I was just wrapping up with graduation parties. I had had quite a bit to drink that night, but was still capable of driving. Pulled into my driveway, and a thought struck me. The thought was that I had to see him before I left home for college in a few months. I had to face the ghost of my grandfather if I wanted to move on with my life.

57:42I went into the house and approached the guest room I wasn't prepared for what I would see I don't think I ever could be I stood outside the guest room for a few moments trying to steel myself for what I would see next I listened to the methodical whirring of the oxygen tank and the discordant gasps and coughs that broke through the rhythm the more I listened the more I found my resolve weakening another couple of minutes and I knew that I would completely lose the will to investigate so I swung open the door and stepped into the room. My eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. The curtains had been closed to the moonlight, giving the room a sepulchral feel to it.

58:23The room had grown musty and smelled like mothballs in stagnant air. The wheezing and gasping was louder now. It's just in my mind now, but when I recall this moment, I could have sworn that the rasping and haggard sounding breaths were almost deafening. My eyes adjusted enough to see the shade of something on the bed. My eyes adjusted to the light, and I could see him clearly. The spirit or echo of my grandfather was on the bed. His body writhed spasmodically on the sheets. It looked like he was having a seizure or stroke of some sort. His hands clawed at the air in front of his face. This motion looked out of place until I realized that he was probably trying to adjust the respirator on his face.

59:10he writhed in the bed for a few more minutes before he fell still he was dead the room was silent turned around and left the room so door closed behind me sound of frantic gasping and wheezing started up again man talk about a nightmare just living through choking like the respirator falling off oh my god ever and ever god it's just only happening at his house it doesn't seem like any of the clairvoyance happens outside of the house well these are the only two places what's the only two people that died because it's in the place that they died it's repeated over and over well i just don't know if it's like because people have fucking died i just didn't know these realistically he would be walking around and see like shit too like medieval era people like or i just mean like you believe in the story so far that he is actually seeing other people outside of this but we're just hearing about the occasions in the house No, I think...

1:00:08I think this is all he's seen so far. Okay. But realistically, yes. If you walked around anywhere, you would see the remnants of something. Someone killing someone for some reason. Car wrecks everywhere. Just every street corner. Oh my god, yeah. The night before heading off to college, I rolled over in my bed and watched the nightly visitor to my bedroom. She rocked slightly in the bed and wept quietly. It taught me to know that she was doing her best to keep quiet. Who was she hiding her depression from? Why couldn't she ask for help? Why didn't I? She was tragically young. I leaned over to her and whispered to her, I'm so sorry this happened to you.

1:00:50There's much else left to say. To college the next day. DeVry University.

1:01:00Full sale technology. I'm going to MIT. I'm sorry I can't take you with me. I went to National American University. You want to cry in my bed at MIT? Would you like that? I went to Phoenix Online. I went to DeVry University! Time drudged on, and my first semester of college was going well. Didn't have any ghostly encounters in the dorm, which was a plus. I don't think I would have managed to focus with the spirit of someone constantly dying from alcohol poisoning and frat initiations gone wrong. I had friends, but in a sad way, I found myself waking up in the middle of the night, wanting to see, to talk to her, talk at her at least.

1:01:43November rolled around and I decided to drive home and be with the family for Thanksgiving. I wish I'd just stayed at college. I arrived the day before Thanksgiving and proceeded to catch up with my parents. My mom even rushed outside and hugged me as I pulled into the driveway. My old man greeted me with a beer and we sat on the deck as I filled them in on my life at college. My first semester wasn't over with yet, but I was already adjusted to life at college. It was one of the happier moments of my life. Reminiscing about it now leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. We had a good dinner, and I settled down for bed.

1:02:19I was getting ready to drift off to sleep when I heard the sounds I had become so familiar with when I was a child. I opened my eyes and faced the crying girl. I thought of all the usual platitudes that I used to offer to her. You were too young. You had so many moments ahead of you. You could have been happy. I wanted to tell her all of these things. Something else was on my mind. The thought was that something wasn't right. It felt like I was overlooking something deathly important. It was something that I couldn't make sense of until I saw him one more time. I moved upstairs and went to the guest room.

1:02:59the respirator was still clicking on and off and he was still gasping out his last minutes in that room trepidation filled me my whole body was screaming at me to turn around and my mind was begging the same i knew if i entered that room and witnessed my grandfather's death again that i would never be the same i entered the room anyways and i wish to this very day that I had never tried to save that curiosity. He was still on the bed, gasping, clawing, and struggling in his final moments. I moved close to him and sat on the bed. His body writhed and twisted on the sheets. I knew something was off about all of this.

1:03:39Something in the back of my mind pushed me forward. I leaned in close and watched it all carefully. I watched as my grandfather clawed at the empty air in front of his face. Something was off about all of this. It wasn't clawing at the respirator. When I realized what it was, I knew I had no other choice. I went downstairs and grabbed my suitcase, flight the house. Oh, that's pretty cool. I don't know whether that's happening. His father, it's not his respirator fell off. Someone choked him to death. Oh, you think his dad strangled him? His dad or his mom. yeah well oh maybe the mom mentions the dad loved him uh but when he gets home mom's already changing the sheets oh shit she's emotional and it talks about how the grandfather would command her all the time uh treat her more like a maid than a daughter-in-law and then he gets home and she's already cleaned up so jesus okay yeah so i think it's mom killed her that's pretty cool that you put that together from the echo of the death yeah i debated whether or not to wake up my parents and let them know why i was leaving and why i would not return okay maybe he hasn't put together i'm pretty sure it's his mom i think that why they wouldn't return i think he knows that like hey you killed this person maybe that's why he's not returning well he says i wouldn't wake them up to let them know well yeah he's not gonna wake them up and be like hey i know what you did i think that's what he's saying at least that's how i'm reading it okay i debated whether or not to wake up my parents and let them know why i was leaving and why i would not return and call me a coward but I just couldn't do it.

1:05:14I just couldn't face them with that knowledge. I threw my suitcase in the trunk of my car and drove to the nearest bar. I never needed to drink more than I did at that very moment. I wanted something to give me the liquid courage to leave Kalamazoo, to leave my family. I was almost in tears by the time I reached the dive bar. I swallowed back my emotions, entered the bar, and sat at the stool closest to the bartender. It was a dive, the kind of place that had sawdust on the floor to soak up sweat, spills, and skull spit. I wasted no time in getting the bartender's attention. I ordered a double shot of whiskey and downed it as soon as the drink was poured.

1:05:53I ordered another, and another, and another. As midnight rolled around, and they were preparing for last call, they decided to perform their night-before-Thanksgiving tradition. The bartender would go around and ask what everyone was thankful for this season, give them a free shot at the cheapest liquor they had offered for their response. An old man in the corner said, For health! A young patron, who was probably too young to be drinking, shouted, YOLO! I was promptly denied a shot. A woman around my age declares, For life and its adventures. down the drink. A Spanish couple at a booth declared, A familia!

1:06:31Continued around the bar until he at last came to me. Bartender came around to me and he asked, What are you most thankful for? Pause for a moment. I didn't know what to say. Bartender tapped his foot, ready to wrap up last call and finish their night. I had to say something. I couldn't think of anything I was grateful for. It's not in the right headspace. I only wanted to drink the memory away. He grunted. Come on, buddy. What are you grateful for? Said the first thing that popped into my head. And mortem. God, fuck off.

1:07:08I'd be like and you're not getting a shot see you later hey see you later dead poet society

1:07:17what's at boredom it's death to death yeah yeah what are you grateful for to death yeah I watched the bartender's quizzical expression as I downed the shot and ordered another I'd have ordered another after that one but in some part deep down inside of me, I knew that I would never erase that image from my mind. The image of my grandfather clawing at something in front of his face. The thought of the pillow over him that my mother had been holding down, smothering him in his sleep. The memory of her disposing of the bedsheets and the pillowcase the day I returned home from school only made me feel worse.

1:07:54I tossed back the shot and left the bar, not knowing what to do next. I felt sick to death. That's a fun tying to it. I like that. I felt sick to death because his grandpa was so sick too. Yep. The, and also sick to death is ad nauseam, ad mortem. Oh, is it? Sickness to death. Yeah. The, uh, yeah, that is, that is fun. The, uh, a fun little twist there too. Yeah. You just expect it to be him clawing and gasping for air with his life, like with his ventilating machine. But it's almost a weird, uh, the, the mention earlier of like, he's clawing in front of his face and you're like, Oh, I guess that's a choking motion.

1:08:29Yeah. But realizing it's a pillow. That's pretty cool. yeah it's a lot of fun yeah and it's also i wonder how cathartic it is for the it's like all these feelings of just being like the things you wish you could have said or like all the things you wish you could have done the dad's talking about how abusive he was and all that kind of stuff yeah and it's the mom that ends up killing him it's pretty sick so yeah i think that's a pretty cool time i like the idea of being able it's very sixth sense being able to piece together you know someone's final moments what happened to them by uh their ghost mm-hmm well well speaking of ghosts you know little sally down in the basement she was killed all her downstairs they have literally surgical tools they have surgical tools they took out her appendix and they have a table and she's like at all they're like this is like the table where she died on what do you think of the what do you think it's an ethical thing to have that kind of stuff no or does it matter no well because it's been so much time if it was last year that happened And I think people are like, that's poor taste.

1:09:29But because it's so long ago, you're like, who gives a fuck? And I didn't know. That's what I'm saying. Is that the thought process? To me, the thought process is, will their family see it? And I'm not talking about great grandkids and stuff like that. I'm talking about their sisters, their son, their mother, stuff like that. It's such a weird attachment from a human thing. It is. It is. But to me, that's like history, for example. If you were to have Pompeii is a great example, where we have all the frozen bodies of Pompeii. When you think about how morbid that is. Oh, sure. You know, like if that happened last year, imagine there's an earthquake this year.

1:10:05And then in 2027, there's a museum you can go to of the petrified bodies from the earth. Well, that's what it feels like. Fucking like, I mean, I don't really go on Twitter, but perusing Twitter during like the Ukraine war. That feels all the videos of people dying on both sides. That feels pretty crazy. All the drone footage and all that kind of shit. It's just like, here's death. Here's death. Here's death. And to that, to that one, there's even something in my head where it's like, well you're at war with them so they're the enemy and stuff like that um so there there is a layer in my brain that detaches it a little bit but when it comes to like with this house a child right to me time does heal it enough that you can be now is the way it's presented respectful no but it's pretty i mean the whole thing too like making sure that you know that she was like in total misery and kind of yeah i don't know how respectful it is it feels weird Yeah, well, does it feel respectful or does it feel like a horror gimmick for people?

1:11:00What do you guys think? I think, yeah, people want something tangible to make the connection, even if they know it's a prop, so I think that's part of it, too. Yeah. It's a museum. It's like the Holocaust Museum. Wouldn't say it's anything really like that. I don't think this... Alright, ad infinitum. This is the Holocaust Museum to you. Ad infinitum. We can keep talking. We can keep reading. this is the Holocaust Museum the dolls everywhere anytime Nick speaks it's an assault to someone turns off his camera with his cock and has to publicly tell people a lot of people I feel like would just be like oops yeah sorry I turned it off and he's like yeah my dick turned it off you can't stop this guy it pressed into it also you speak about your cock as if it has it has it's own mind it pressed into it I begged it not to I wouldn't be surprised with him oh my god no well should we finish it off with ad infinum ad infinum the final part so we now reach the conclusion my third act my exeant stage left god dude I feel like this is he's like you know I went to college and I didn't have a lot of friends well not really it's like yeah probably because you're saying shit like this like ad mortem oh hey man hey man there's like a kegger having down the road well at infinitum.

1:12:25And you're like, nah, actually, we actually just canceled it. Hey, you want to come hang out? Carp diem. I lied, actually. I was going to take off all my clothes and hang myself in my dad's study.

1:12:42Spoils! Yeah, spoils! Spoils! Spoils! He didn't hang it. He shot himself. Did he? I thought he hung himself. Oh, he takes a gun and they wake up. Yeah, then Red Foreman runs up and he's like, No!

1:12:57And then there's like an incredibly heartbreaking scene where the mom finds him and he's like, no, he's okay. He's okay. We'll just grab this. It's like, damn. Dead Poets Society is a great movie. Oh, Captain Mike. See, that's what this fucking guy would do. Oh, Captain Mike. He'd be like, hey, man. Me and some people are going to go grab some burgers and shakes you want to come with. Oh, Captain Mike Captain. actually never mind i'm like totally vegetarian now so well next time you think about me i love i love plants

1:13:34vegetarians just uh you're trying to connect with them man i wish i could still talk and cry next to that crying girl in my bed just an insufferable guy through and through oh yeah in every sense it's a car like someone ran by the window really fast did you guys hear like dogs? I did hear that. I heard, well, at first I looked at Harry because I heard, I could have swore I heard somebody say something. Wait, hold on. Okay, I heard something. Yeah, I heard something. That's fucked up that they would do that. That's rude. It's rude to do that. Wait, hold up. Okay. Wait, hold on everyone. All right, ad infinim.

1:14:09Ad infinim. Also too, I will say the beginning of the story, making the presence of the girl, you know, it has, it's put a different vibe on the house so far for me. because the girl was so innocent and like you know because when you go into a haunted space i feel like you're always like i'm on defense whatever but now it's like it has a more sympathetic tone which i should have had what is that that was someone banging on the window that was someone knocking on the glass uh do you do you want us to go down there yeah check on it that that was someone like bring the camera i'm too scared to go down yeah we would do it but we're like recording and all right so apparently we're trying to finish this out and apparently somebody's like knocking on a door or something.

1:14:51Okay. Oh yeah. Be careful on the stairs.

1:15:18Have a good night. Thank you. You're welcome.

1:15:26Okay, so... It was just the Taco Bell order. Thank God. It's probably people just fucking with us. Probably. Well, it worked.

1:15:40Just been out of$100 on Taco Bell.

1:15:46Just hear Harry get shot in the chest. That would, oh my god. Don't even say that. Harry? Where is he? Harry? Did he take the camera? He's fucking with that. Yeah. Hold on, let me do it. I'm going to check.

1:16:13Is everyone going to Elm one at a time? The door's kind of still open, too. The door's just open.

1:16:27He's not. He's not outside. Somebody definitely came back in and entered the house, right? He's got to be screwing with us. Well, it could have been the door just squeaking. I don't know. No, that first one was the first one. So I'm doing. No, I mean, I don't. He might have gone to his car.

1:17:05He's clearly messing with us.

1:17:11He's probably messing with us, but that was a knock. Yeah. But from not him. Yeah, yeah. It was on the glass downstairs. Look out that window. Because you can see his car out there, right? Well, don't you go down there. Oh, why do they keep leaving the door open? Well, I don't care. Just stay up here. Someone else is knocking.

1:17:49what have you thought about the story so far have you liked it yeah I like it I like it so far I think it's

1:17:58I'm just waiting for the pop for the balloon to blow

1:18:06yeah I like it so far I think it's cool, the idea of this, like, loner coast and stuff like that.

1:18:30We could just keep reading. Should we? I don't know. I don't know. Might as well.

1:18:41you find everyone what is that oh taco bell his door dash oh oh where did you all go

1:18:53what who the knocked on the door though he knocked he knocked oh he did and then he oh He didn't want to be at the house. He didn't want to be at the house? He was scared. Alright. We thought you got... I think we both were getting a little... Well, I thought that you guys were pranking us because Harry goes out and then he never comes back. And then you go look and he's like, oh, Harry left the door, but you don't come back. And then Nick's like, I have to go downstairs. After a while, that's what I was like. There's some prank. there's going to be some scary thing. But then I was sitting here like, who did they get to knock on the door?

1:19:33The tapping on the window actually fucked me. Yeah. Because it's one thing if all three of you leave and you're pulling a prank, it's another that you've got a fourth person to show up and tap on the glass. Give me a burrito while I eat this. Here, I can't eat while I'm reading, so I'll just give you the bag. Perfect. You guys want a burrito? Oh my God, these are so many. One's for Sally too. I'll take a burrito. Oh, yeah. Hey. Hey, you know what? Pour one out for Sally right now on her carpet. Mmm. Mmm. All right. We're back. Ad infinitum. So we now reach the conclusion. My third act. My exeant left stage left.

1:20:16I feel like I should rehash my predicament a little. Ever since I was a teenager, I've been able to see things that no one else can. I guess. I can see certain spirits. I don't know why I can see some and not others. I thank God that I can't see every dead spirit. Otherwise, my world would be full of billions of people that died before my time. There you go. After that. I've only seen a handful of ghosts during my life. One being a girl who killed herself in my house. Next being my grandfather, who was put out of his suffering by my mother. These ghosts always repeat their last moments ad nauseum, ad mortem.

1:20:53I wish I could say that I managed to bear the burden of what I had learned about my mother. The reality was that I just lost control of everything. I began to...

1:21:07Is there a Diablo saucer? No, I forgot. It's their Diablo saucer. Yeah. I didn't know any Diablo saucer with this BB5 flavor. It's ironic, but I do get it a lot. I wish I could say that I managed to be... I'm so bad. This really is like a sleepover when you're eight and you're trying to do something and your friend just keeps doing some BS over in the corner. Damn, dude, this is scary. It's like you're trying to play Xbox and there's one friend like, but Monopoly! I'm not playing Xbox until we play a round of Monopoly. So Captain, my captain. That's true right now. I wish I could say that I managed to bear the burden of what I learned about my mother.

1:21:58The reality was that I just lost control of everything. I began slipping in a downward spiral. I tried to finish up the semester strong, but the mental image of my mother pressing a pillow over my grandfather's face and smothering him to death haunted me. I found that drinking dulled that thought some, but did not completely obliterate it. I was self-medicating for some success, but the memory was constantly needling away at my conscience. which I will add off what he says put him out of his suffering it's kind of implying that it was a mercy killing yeah her killing him that way so maybe versus her like hating him yeah for lack of a better term I became a walking shit show they love opening that front door just walking in and out did they order more DoorDash?

1:22:44there's no way we got pizza hot too I'm joking what'd you say? I said we got pizza hot too here we go I like to put the burrito and the diablo sauce on the pepperoni. It's a Mexican calzone.

1:23:02Oh, there goes my computer. Oh, shit. That's what you get. That's so what you get. You just pour water all over it. Oh, shit. It's a Mexican calzone. Oh, shit. Uh-oh. This is not working I think we're okay This is still working Aren't apples pretty good with water resistance? Oh no

1:23:36Where my burrito at?

1:23:43Did they only get one Baja Blast To share with five people? Well it's my Baja Blast Right now But Hunter made me laugh as I was swallowing up my chest It's like cramping Oh Shut up We're in a haunted house Right now This is very scary That bear keeps leaning towards you It moved No it didn't Shut up It's leaning forward from where it was earlier He was looking more towards me He's homing in on Hunter Editors compare the position I'm telling you I saw both his eyes I'm only seeing one now Shut up I can't take it with the every time it's not that good I've had Taco Bell before it is not that good Nick which one is it I don't care I don't care if we're reading a scary story I fucking keep reading them.

1:24:48Crunchy beef burrito. Oh.

1:24:55I was drinking whiskey like it was the waters of the river life. See, there you go. It's more stupid. It's pissing me off. The memory was more persistent than the ghosts themselves. That reality haunted me day and night. The image of his final moments were branded into my brain. Can you really blame me for getting smashed every opportunity I got? Maybe I'm writing all of this to find someone sympathetic who will listen to me. I don't deserve it. Or maybe I'm writing this to reach out to someone who could talk some sense into me and give me the answers I desperately needed. I wish I could say that I dropped out of college when I realized that I wasn't doing anything except drinking.

1:25:36But after another round of failing grades, my college politely informed me that I should not return next semester. I didn't bother appealing the decision. I decided not to return home. I crashed with a friend for a couple of weeks while I tried to figure out what to do next. Couldn't bring myself to go back. Couldn't face my mom. Slept on my friend's couch and drank like a fish thrown into a tank filled with whiskey. I managed to live with my friend for a couple of weeks before he kicked my drunk ass out. He had put up with me for too long. He had spent too many nights cleaning up my messes and turning me on my side when I passed out.

1:26:13He was a good guy, but I think the final straw was my late night confession about the ghost. I think he could handle an alcoholic hot mess such as myself, but throw in my hallucinations and that was just too much. He calmly listened to my drunken ramblings and waited until I passed out before stealing my cell phone from me and calling my parents. I woke up in my bed at home from my blackout. my father was standing in the doorway and my mom was sitting on the bed next to me she was stroking my hair gently like she used to i'm gonna be honest what liking taco bell is performative oh i disagree yeah no you can be okay with it but like people are like oh i love talk bell give me some 2 a.m taco bell that's performative is it i gotta disagree with that

1:27:09Oh, I disagree. No, I got it.

1:27:16She whispered to me about how she was here for me and how she was going to get me through this. It's in that moment that I knew that I couldn't confess what I knew about my grandfather's death to my father. She was my mother. She was the one I ran to when I hurt myself as a kid. Maybe it was a mercy that she did to my grandfather. I decided I would try to turn my life around. If only it were that easy. I'm going to let you in on a few fun facts about giving up drinking after over a year of heavy drinking. First fact being, it's not fun. You sweat like you were trapped in a sauna. You have mild tremors.

1:27:57out of my peripheral. I can just see him examining the burrito. Turn it over. You're driving me up a wall right now. These different positions you're getting into. The burrito.

1:28:19You're laying on a bunch of toys that are given to this ghost girl. We're in a ghost girl's sacred altar room. You don't have to be comfy.

1:28:40It was funny. Now it's not funny. Now I'm upset. Stop turning it over in your hand. You look like the guy in American Beauty. Oh, filming the bag? Yeah. He does kind of look like that kid, doesn't he? Do I? Yeah, a little bit. Because you have no emotion on your face. You're fucking, like, scaring me, man. I can't read you, man.

1:29:14You have no emotion on your face. He's like, I have to investigate.

1:29:21First fact being, it's not fun. You sweat like you were trapped in a sauna. You have mild tremors, unless you're a hardcore alcoholic, and then you get DTs, delirium trimmings, which are like severe tremors. I luckily didn't have that, but I did have anxiety, which was severely compounded by the realization that while I was there sweating, slightly shaking, and otherwise feeling like shit in my bed, the ghost girl was right next to me, weeping. After a few minutes of this, She would get up to go hang herself in the boiler room, and I would make a mad dash to the bathroom to throw a pile. Try to kick my alcoholism.

1:29:58I really did. I really wanted to move on with my life. I wanted a normal life with stupid, meaningless problems. I just couldn't. I couldn't live at that charnel house. When the girl's weeping wasn't getting to me, the wheezing and groaning of my dying, dead grandfather was assaulting my ears. I managed to live at home for a few months before I fled and went up to Grand Rapids, Michigan. It only took a couple of days living by myself, with myself, before I downed a bottle, Johnny Walker. My parents tried to get me to come home, but I couldn't go back to that place. I managed to convince them to let me stay as long as I called them weekly to keep them in the loop.

1:30:38My father even managed to get me a job outside of town. I worked weekdays cleaning animal cages for a pharmaceutical company. It wasn't the most glamorous of jobs, but it paid well enough to support my necessities and me. Fortunately, drinking heavily had become one of those necessities. I managed to keep my habits under control for a month or so. I would work on the weekday 7 to 5, and then while away, my weekends, whiskey-wash stupor. I found some friends along the way, some at work and a few of the bars I frequented. I was just getting a sense of normalcy in my life when everything fell apart.

1:31:13It all started with a phone call. It was the simplest of things. One of my routine calls to my parents. We chatted about the usual things. I caught them up on my work, friends, and life in general. I was talking to my mom, and she mournfully said, Your grandfather would have been... I have a mouthful of... This is incredible. This is really... This is an amazing performance on her. Do you want the rest of the Baja? No, I'm okay. Your grandfather would have been 78 today As soon as those I love your first tip Your grandfather would have been As soon as those words were uttered I heard something click and began Pumping a familiar sound through the phone It was the sound of the liberator Giant Ox Oh god dude You scared the shit out of me Sure Andrew you have got to make this watchable

1:32:13I do not It was the sound of the liberator The giant oxygen tank that my grandfather It died Okay Alright that's better It died Trevor Can I get another camera? What? Can I get another camera? Wait What happened? It's been a whole... God, Ad Infantum is truly testing us right now. Oh, God, keep going. The story's good. Oh, yeah. The story's still good. Yep. What's that? You asked him to turn back to get sauce. It's a bunch of Diablo sauce. Really? I got sauce. How'd you get sauce? We just went there. The Taco Bell is that close to the Sally house? Yeah, it was surprisingly close. There's also thawing.

1:33:10That's very kind of you. That's very kind of you. Harry and I found a lot of very creepy old buildings. The buildings out around here are a lot. Yeah, we were going to get some. I would do anything in my life to finish this story. Are you not enjoying it? I think it's pretty good. No, it's good. I'm just saying, like, I just want to... It's just... It's like... I'm so ready for it. I do feel like I'm in an echo right now, like looping. I'm in my nose. I'm in Sally's echo. I think I said, all right, now ad infinitum six times. I think six times I tried to start. I heard something click and began pumping a familiar sound through the phone.

1:33:50It was the sound of the Liberator, a giant oxygen tank that my grandfather owned, which my parents had donated to a nursing home long ago. Sunday became a terrible thing for me. It was the day my parents would call. I'd spend the week dreading the time they would call. I knew it was them before they even spoke. The sound of the respirator droning became almost deafening to me. I had asked my mom and dad to speak up when talking to me so I could hear them over the sound of the liberator. They became increasingly concerned over my erratic behavior and eventually invited me home for dinner. I turned them down, lying and saying that I already had plans.

1:34:26I knew that if I stepped foot in that house with that spirit, I would lose it. My mom was silent for a few minutes before telling me she loved me. I was getting ready to respond when it began. It was a low, barely audible sound, but I heard it. When I heard that sound, my weekend resolve shattered apart. I heard the low, pain sound of my grandfather's strained wheezing that was quickly muffled by a pillow pressed over his face. I managed to keep myself in check for a few weeks by relegating my heavy drinking to the weekend. That way, I managed to be productive enough to keep myself grounded. Hearing my grandfather's death gasp rattling through my mom's phone was too much for me.

1:35:06I fled to my old vice and let it take over my life. Went out to the nearest bar and drank myself into a stupor. I'm pretty sure I was still drunk when I went into work the next day. My co-workers knew something was going on when I showed up the next day drunk. I even snuck out at lunch to have a couple of pulls from the flask in my car to get through the day. Tried to keep myself in a constant state of inebriation because I knew that Sunday was fast approaching and being intoxicated dulled the grim realization. My co-workers were tight-lipped about it, but I could tell from their disapproving glares that I was wearing thin on their patients.

1:35:40The next Sunday night, the wheezing was so loud that I could barely hear my parents' voices. I made up an excuse telling them I didn't feel well and hung up shortly after that. I spent the rest of that weekend getting wasted as if my drinking could ward off their upcoming call and their concern. The situation at work degraded and my friends and co-workers began to distance themselves from me, sensing that I was about to self-destruct. I developed my own routine for getting through the week. I'd wake up in the morning and wash my mouth out with a bottle of Jack Daniels before going to work. Luckily, I worked in a pretty rural area where my sloppy driving didn't attract a lot of attention and the sky was still dark at six in the morning.

1:36:17I'd have lunch by myself, take pulls from a flask to steal myself for the rest of the day. I'd become a social pariah at work. After work, I'd visit a bar and have bar food for dinner and a couple of drinks to keep me going through the night. I knew that I was burning through my money I had accumulated while working, but it was a necessity. When I was sober, I questioned what I heard. Was I really hearing my grandfather wheezing and gasping through the phone, or was it my guilt at knowing that my mom had done my decision not to confront her tormenting me? Was it a mercy killing, or was it desperation?

1:36:52I'll never know. I managed to make it through another Sunday night call, but I'm almost certain they knew something was happening. Maybe I slurred my words, or maybe it was how I spoke, but they knew that I'd fallen off the wagon. It was at this point that I can't really relate what happens next to you, all with reliable accuracy. I forgot a large portion of this time due to my alcohol-induced days. I spent days in such a stupor that I'm still amazed that I wasn't fired. I have little to no recollection of those days that I was constantly chasing that blacked-out state. I guess I was still doing a good enough job to warrant paying me, but I'm not sure how.

1:37:29There's only one memory of this binge that I can remember with clarity. I remember turning over my phone and seeing that it was my parents calling me after weeks of radio silence from them. I hung up the phone and continued poisoning my body. The next moment that I can faithfully recall was a sound. A jarring thud snapped me out of my drunken autopilot and sobered me up like a cold shower. My head snapped up and my glazed eyes glanced around. I realized I was driving and had just zoned out. I regained control of the wheel and slowed down the car. I pulled over to calm my pounding heart. Having achieved that, I got out to inspect the damage.

1:38:09There was a hellacious dent in the bumper. I examined the area as my stomach began to sink. Did I hit something? That thought sobered me up. There was no blood on the car, so I reasoned that I hadn't hit anything living. The dent was substantial, so it had to be something large. If I had a hazard to guess, I would estimate that it was the size of a basketball, or larger. I breathed out a sigh of relief before another thought insinuated itself. What had I hit with my car? I walked a couple hundred yards back, but I didn't see anything. I looked for logs, branches, or any type of debris in the road.

1:38:44My search didn't turn anything up. I reasoned it was nothing, and after confirming that it was around 6 in the morning and a weekday, I went to work. I didn't have a liquid lunch that day I didn't have any lunch at all really My stomach and mine was so upset that I doubted I could hold anything down even if I wanted to Finished up washing the animal cages and went home for the day Along the way home, I stopped by the side of the desolate rural road and searched the area again Turned up nothing in my investigation I went home and sat in my bed I didn't have anything to drink I didn't eat either I also didn't sleep what had happened on that road when did i hit i recall it was a saturday i remember this because i had to check my phone's calendar to find the correct date much to my chagrin i realized that checking my phone to find out what day it was had become a common occurrence for me i moved to the fridge in a mechanical repetition of my typical morning ritual i opened the door expecting it to be barren i saw a carton of eggs and enough food to make breakfast for myself.

1:39:50It was a shame that I still wasn't hungry. It was around this time that I started to get worried about my health. I hadn't eaten anything since yesterday morning. I sat down on my couch where I typically had breakfast and turned on the television. Dark thoughts began to surface in my brain. My mind flashed back to when I was younger. I was watching the ghostly girl. She would appear almost every night and she was always repeating. She wept for a few minutes before sitting up and going to the boiler room to hang herself my grandfather spent his afterlife lying in his bed coughing and wheezing before my mother went to his room and smothered him what i can only hope was an act of mercy what was i doing if not repeating myself like them that's i like that connection a lot that he's so terrified of living in a loop he can't come out of but he's doing the exact same thing to himself with the drinking right like pushing himself there he's created his own hell that he's so scared of i was filled with existential terror horrible thoughts began to fester in my brain what if i had hit something bigger than a log maybe i'd struck a tree and gone through my car's windshield maybe i was lying on that quiet rural street dying or already dead was i doomed to repeat a drunken haze before coming around full circle to the moment of my death i continued with that terrifying mindset before there was some breaking news and i was saved from that horrible thought and thrown to a much more painful one the breaking news was an amber alert oh no i figured he hit a kid or something oh gosh dude yeah uh oh a local nine-year-old boy had gone missing his parents woke up a day ago to find that he was not in his bed police didn't have any leads but they were confident they would turn something up in their search.

1:41:44I watched his tearful mom pleading with everyone through the TV to please return her boy to her. He was only nine years old. He liked reading, video games, and exploring the woods near their house. Her eyes welled up with tears and she repeated, He's my little explorer. Please come home to me. For some reason, my stomach coiled up tighter than it had before and I felt sick. It seemed like every channel I flipped to, I was looking at that boy's cherubic face. When it wasn't his picture, it was his mother's weeping and his father's pained expression. I turned off the TV. Couldn't watch anymore. I went to the fridge and got a beer.

1:42:25Cracked it open and I just held it to my mouth when I got sick. I emptied my stomach into the sink. Typically, I felt better after getting sick, but this time I only felt worse. I went out onto my balcony to get some fresh air I live in an apartment on the third floor Every now and then I would go out onto my balcony to have a cigarette Below me, police and people swarmed the streets like ants in a colony Were they all looking for the boy? My stomach coiled up even more to the point that it hurt Even though it was early in the afternoon, I went to bed I was so exhausted, but I still couldn't get to sleep I spent hours in my bed turning, writhing, being unable to make sense of it all.

1:43:10What had happened on that road? It was around four in the morning when I decided that I wasn't going to get any sleep until I knew what had happened out there. I needed the cold hard truth or reassurance. I had to have the certainty. I got in my car and started heading to where I had had my accident. I wanted to know the truth, even if it was as horrible as I thought it would be. I parked my car on the side of the road. As I walked up and down the road, my memory slowly started to recall bits and pieces. I was driving to work. When I was waiting at stoplights, I would take a sip from my flask.

1:43:47It was almost like muscle memory, and sometimes I would catch myself trying to drink from an empty flask, even though I knew that I'd finish it off moments earlier. I turned off the city road. I was heading towards my work via an old country road through the woods. I remember my head drooping down. I wasn't tired I just wanted something to get me through the day get me through the Sunday night call my head had just snotted down again and then thud I must have walked up and down those dismal roads for about two hours the sun was just beginning to peek through the night sky and I didn't have to have to try and explain to any passing cars while I was walking up and down a mile stretch of road looking for god knows what I decided that my mind was playing tricks on me and it was just a fiendish coincidence.

1:44:35I pulled around and headed home. As I was leaving, I thought that I had seen something in my rearview mirror on the road. I ignored it. I got home and reflexively grabbed the remote and aimed it at the television. I didn't depress the button because I knew what was waiting for me on the TV. I managed to make myself a sandwich to eat. I still wasn't feeling hungry, but I forced myself to eat it. As I swallowed down the last bite, I regretted my decision to. A sandwich set in my stomach like lead. I spent the rest of the day wandering aimlessly around my apartment, too anxious to settle down with a book and too nervous to watch television.

1:45:13I talked to my parents that night, but I was too shell-shocked to recall anything from that conversation. I can't even remember if I heard the spirit of my grandfather wheezing and gasping into the phone like a perverted caller. If you had a gun to my head and told me to remember that conversation with my family, I would say that I remember talking about work. I would then question why you would hold a gun to my head for such trivial information. Safe to assume that I didn't sleep at all that night. I rolled out of bed and went about my morning ritual. I forced myself to eat a plate of eggs and a slice of toast.

1:45:45I worked late that night. Most of my time was spent trying to correct the multitude of mistakes I made due to being distracted. It was dark when I drove home. I was just rounding the corner when I saw him emerge from the woods on the other side of the road. I slammed the brakes, but it was too late and he lifted his tiny hands to his face, blinded by my headlights. He gave a slight cry before being knocked off the road, like he had been backhanded by some invisible and vengeful God. A terrible reveal, but at the same time, that would be pretty funny to see. Just the kid getting a zoop. I mean, he's like, there's, and he just says, yeah, because there's no car there, but it's the action of being thrown that far.

1:46:26So it's just him invisibly like... Yeah. Yeah, Hunter, funny. Yeah. That nine-year-old's getting hit by drunk drivers. It's really funny. I'm just saying the visual. I understand. I pulled off the road and looked up and down the streets. There was no one on the road. I was alone, in a sense. I walked to the side of the road and proceeded to climb down the slope. I scanned the darkness for a few minutes before I found him. He was curled up in the alcove of a tree. He was in a fetal position, cradling his fragile, broken body. He stared at his corpse for a few minutes before going home, pouring every single liquor bottle down the drain.

1:47:08I thought he was going to call the police, turn himself in. I feel like he's building up to it. Probably, but it is a little funny to be like, you know what? I'm getting clean. No more for me. This was a wake-up call. That's the wake-up call. For sure. Message received. Click. There's this, so I played Resident Evil 9, right? And the guy through all the Resident Evil games who like started Umbrella, who made the virus, is this guy named Spencer. He's like super, most of the games, he's like an old dude in a wheelchair. He's on life support, who's trying to create these viruses so he can find a way to live forever in like a perfect body.

1:47:45And in the series, he is directly responsible for the deaths of like a billion people, right? Well, 9 comes out and you find the secret video of him where it's like an interview and he adopted like a little girl like a baby girl he found and he's like in some small way I hope to make up for the deaths I've caused it's like no you don't it's like no it doesn't it doesn't do it at all you adopted one living child that's the difference should be pretty cool I think that doesn't count but here it's like like, you know what? I may have hit, I may have killed a child with my vehicle, but I'm done hitting the bottle.

1:48:30That's for sure. Yeah. After I emptied out every drink I had in my fridge, which took a while, I stood at the sink for a few minutes before breaking down. I thought throwing it all away would make me feel better, but I only felt worse. I can only describe it like this. Imagine that at some point in your life, something, somehow it's knocked loose from you and you realize it's missing but don't know how to fix it you live with that emptiness for years before realizing that there's a way to numb it you can pour alcohol into the exposed wound and for a moment it doesn't feel so bad the world seems monochrome and dull you don't have to care so much all that pain all that ache is gone and you can function if only for a little bit pretty soon you realize that this is the only way you can reach the state of disassociation you keep returning to that found and self-medicating as best you can with what you can until you realize that something's wrong just doesn't work like it used to it doesn't dull those thoughts it doesn't blunt those memories at first it numbed everything but now now there's a dull throbbing in your head of what you've done and what you've failed to do and it festers it eats away at you regardless of how much liquor you pour into it until you realize that it's not the liquor that's the problem chew so you pour everything out thinking that it'd be some revelation some great boon but it's not it only feels like that emptiness inside you has grown now there's nothing to aneth anethetize aneth aneth aneth anethes anethes anethesize it whatever there's nothing to fucking uh numb it yeah and now there's nothing to numb it there's nothing to solve these issues you can't piece yourself back together something inside you is broken and you don't know if you'll ever fix it without alcohol i couldn't find anything to numb that feeling i considered placing an anonymous call in in the amber alert bring some form of closure to his parents but i couldn't do it not yet not yet i couldn't do it i couldn't come on i have faith in him i'm a coward and worse than that i kept asking myself why me all right i'm yeah you sure about that i'm hoping Why me?

1:50:45Why me? The drunk driver that hit the job. I'm the victim here. I made this terrible moment about me. I pretended like I was the victim here, but I wasn't. Word for word, part for bar. I asked myself what I'd done wrong to deserve all of this, as if I didn't already know the answer to that. I'm a selfish coward and no amount of drinking will distract me from that. I managed to drift off to sleep that night, but I kept waking up with a scream in my throat and sweat staining the sheets. Five in the morning, I decided to go into work early. I passed the boy on the way into work and on the way home.

1:51:21Each time it was a little more graphic, a little more gut-wrenching. He stepped out into the road. What was he doing out that early? He raised his hands in front of his face to shield his eyes from my headlights. My car struck him and sent him skipping along the asphalt, a whirling dervish of broken bones off the road. I wish I could tell you that I did the right thing. that I called the police or his parents and let them know where the body of their son was nestled in between the roots of a tree. I couldn't bring myself to do it. I'm a horrible person. I'm the lowest of the low. I tried to go about with my life.

1:52:00After a week, the Amber Alert ended and the world moved on. I didn't. The parents didn't. He's on that road every time I drive to work. I see him stepping out onto the road. He's there with me when I close my eyes. I had foolish thoughts of moving away, but his death is going to follow me. It, no he, is going to haunt me. It's a dead albatross tied around my neck. I'll never forget the sound of his startled gasp, the impact of my bumper on his tiny body. A few days after the Amber Alert was canceled, I returned to that dead road in the middle of the night. I parked my car and watched his spirit living out its last moments, his short life.

1:52:43I hit him with my car and he skipped along the road and off the side. I walked solemnly behind him. I trailed him as he dragged his broken and bleeding body along the dirt. He reached the tree and curled up in its roots. His body was still there when I returned. The diamond left him withered and putrefied. I can't say how long I stood by his corpse. It doesn't really matter in the long run. and as I stood there in vigil, I knew that this guilt was going to consume me, eat me away inside like a cancer. It was in this moment that I knew that I'd be haunted by this and the others for the rest of my life.

1:53:21I'd be dogged by the overwhelming loneliness at the ghostly girl who claimed my bedroom as her haunt. I would be stalked by the feeling of hopelessness that consumed my grandfather as he lay in what would be his deathbed and excruciatingly slid towards his demise. most of all i'd be haunted by my murder of that young boy fatal mistake was now like a tattoo on my soul so we reached the conclusion my conclusion the irony is almost palpable i want nothing more than to die at this very moment and i am consumed by an overwhelming desire to live i know what happens to us when we die i don't want to live those final moments of my life my suicide ad nauseum see myself slicing open my wrist hanging myself for the rest of eternity also don't want to experience this guilt and shame for the rest of my miserable life i want to embrace the reaper and i want to run screaming from his bony grasp these sentiments will follow me ad mortem my mind is constantly waging a war within itself to unload this burden and escape into death and to hold it within me like a dark treasure maybe writing this all out will help me achieve some sort of clarity about what i should do next i doubt it although i have to confess in some form or other don't know which choice is right or wrong all i know is that this is hell ad infinitum it was a fun ending yeah i kind of like that actually he didn't not not that i like they didn't confess but i think it makes his character a little more complex yeah well it's like he um he's obviously tormented his whole life by seeing these death echoes um and that pushes him to drinking which leads to another death so the thing i mentioned i like the theming where he becomes so terrified of death knowing that it's just reliving your final moments over and over that he pushes his life to a point where it's kind of like that death just a misery over and over it seems like all the echoes ring true with himself too the little girl getting killed and dying echoes the kid that he the the child that he killed his mother killing the grandfather is going to echo how he kills himself and even the grandfather grasping and being sick is like his alcoholism yeah it's kind of interesting how it all just like comes full circle and it's like he could have learned from all these things but yet he just decided to like numb himself which you know it'd be difficult hearing all those things and having to deal with that but very uh very interesting needless to say i feel like there's another story about a medium or a psychic or whatever that begins to lose their mind because they see dead people um does that sound familiar to you at all no just six cents like you were saying i mean six cents of course but the six cents was interesting because it's from a child's perspective and they don't really understand or grasp but that one kind of has i mean obviously not with bruce willis but with the child it kind of has a hopeful note at the end of like maybe they can use this for good to help people and you know do things like that and it's like and bruce willis is dead which is a part everyone remembers from the ending i swear there was a movie i watched where it's about a guy who was like he could see the dead but he was like terrified by them and he pushed him to drinking and stuff like that but i can't remember what it was i don't know all i know is the story was great i thought it was a lot of fun i really liked it was interesting to see how all of them kind of tied up and i like that he kind of like inner he interwove uh the at like basically all of the titles uh together in a very fun way where it all felt really cohesive and in a way like i said it just felt uh full circle and a fun moment so yeah i think um imperial invective always has these really cool themes baked into his stories like it's horseled in the earth where it was about like someone decaying you know falling apart as they crawl deeper into this cave and here it kind of feels like

1:57:12pushing your being so afraid of the inevitable that you cause it right i i think being afraid of the ocean that you swim out into it i think uh i feel like with a lot of his work which i might be i don't know but i feel like maybe he has not not that maybe he has a drinking problem no but i think that really but i do think that uh i wonder if like any of his substance abuse or if any of that stuff because so much of his work is about decaying numbing it's about like i mean this this whole story is just literally the ghost that haunts your past that drove him to drink and how that made him the ghost create a ghost yeah create his own ghost with his actions so pretty interesting i think the addiction point like the addiction that he gets from like dwelling on this so much pushes him to create more of it both in his own life and the child create another instance of you know death that has to be repeated over and over so it's like he was so paranoid of this eventuality that he creates it yeah um yeah it's a very it is a very and this isn't a negative of the story but it is an incredibly uh bad what's the word i'm looking for the opposite of like a hopeful like triumph the opposite of triumphant it's a very defeated ending where it's like yeah this horrible thing happened to him.

1:58:31So he made that thing happen and everything got worse. You know, it's a very, it's like he, the narrative continues to punish over and over. No one learned. I mean, it's just, no one learned. It's a byproduct of his actions for sure. Yeah. I think, I think for a story to in the scary house, it felt fun. Like I liked that. It also tied in like just with the setting that we're sitting in, the ghost girl on the bed, ghost girl and all that kind of stuff. I think that it's just, it was a fun read for this. And I think that too, it put a very sympathetic, it puts a very sympathetic twist on the dead, which is interesting, where I think a lot of people use it as a catalyst for fear and things that are trying to attack you.

1:59:11And also, the thing I mentioned at the end of the second part where he figures out that his grandfather was killed by his mom because of the way it's grabbing, it's almost like the story there is giving him an option. The universe is being like, look, you could use this for good, right? I mean, imagine how that could help with investigations or like trying to answer questions about lost loved ones and stuff like that. There's so much he could do with this capability. I don't know if I read it that way either. I think that he has such an unusual and almost unhealthy view of what death is to where.

1:59:42I guess it is true that he only sees people related to him because he mentioned that thing about, thank God I don't see everyone. Yeah, he can't see everybody. And I think that like also I just I don't think that there's ever, it kind of seems interesting of like i don't know if his dad has a similar thing or if it's like the things that are passed down to you but it seems like his relationship with death and how it embeds like and it instills fear i think the biggest problem is that he actually never talked to anybody and he like never he never approached it from that angle he was like very reserved and the thing that he turned to was numbing his problems i think that's like ultimately that's that's the that's the lesson learned is that i think he should have been more open i think that he should have tried to understand it versus fear it.

2:00:22I think too there's also like if you pull out the supernatural elements there's still an existing narrative of someone going through addiction mental turmoil and not making it better. Yeah no this is a very I would say this is a very realistic understanding of addiction of the catalyst is just supernatural. It's easy to also lie to yourself to lie to others and all that I mean like it's but I think the catalyst that makes it a like a fun Sunday with a cherry on top is that there's ghosts and that kind of stuff. A lot of the description of his drinking and those couple paragraphs about for a little bit, you can operate.

2:00:55You don't think about the reality. That was giving me raps of Mother Horse Eyes with all the stuff with the author there talking about alcoholism and stuff like that. The scariest part of all this, though, is door dashing Taco Bell to a haunted house and eating a... And the driver won't come to the door. And the driver tapping on the door and being like, can you meet me down the road to drop off the food? That actually happened. So he walks up to the door and knocks it and just walks away. I am ready to get out of this position. So until next time, guys, we will see you in the next one. Please watch the next one.

2:01:25We'll be going to be recording next in the basement. We're going to be recording in the basement. There's a lot of really big bugs down there, and I can't wait for them to get all in Hunter's hair. So thank you so much also to our audio listeners who didn't get to see this. Please check out the visuals this time. But if you are listening on audio, thank you for listening on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, anywhere you can go and giving us a nice rating. And also thank you, patrons, for supporting the show and getting an extra episode, which we're going to upload like a vlog. We're going to do a vlog and stuff like that for the patrons of us like going around and getting spooked by everything.

2:01:53Yeah, so it's been a lot of fun. Yeah. And also the way you said like, please watch the visuals. This one was so funny. Well, it's too good to pass up. If you want to just watch audios, please just look at me. Please. It's too good. All right. That's it. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Wait, I have to say something. Oh, my God, my back. I'm going to put crickets in his Taco Bellers. I don't know. Bye. L

2:02:46So

2:02:58puts down the views

2:03:03I'm not giving up. I am selling the building. The final season of FX is the bear. The restaurant is flooded. Everything's either gonna be okay. No, stop. Or not. We are outgunned and we are outmanned. We have each other. FX is the bear, the final season. All episodes now streaming on Disney+.