I Found The Bunker Of A Prepper Family | CreepCast

34:31But I love, I love walking through abandoned buildings and stuff like that. Um, uh, there was, this is weirdly reminiscent of some, there's some game I played where you're a man in the woods and there's an old bunker and your dog goes into it. What? That's a game. That has, that has to be influenced by the story though, right? It, it was the Blair Witch video game. Interesting. This came out a while back and it was set in the universe of the Blair Witch and you played as a guy who I think was a veteran who was coming home because there was a missing person out in the woods. So him and his dog went out there to look for it.

35:12And most of the game is you walking through the woods. It's like the Blair Witch gives you visions. And the dog is like your only companion out there. and there's one segment where he starts to hallucinate memories of like Afghanistan overlaid. So it's like these barracks in the middle of the woods and the dog goes down into them and you follow. That's right. That's what it was. The game actually went kind of hard. I don't know what the public reaction was to it, but there's this segment at the end of the game where the dog's injured and you walk with the dog for a long time and the message starts showing up saying leave him so you think the only way you can get out is to lay the dog down and like leave him in the woods um but i think i i did something different or went backwards or something and it fixed it so you can get out with the dog but i remember like walking around for a while not knowing what to do and then seeing the message leave him and i like my stomach dropped like i'm not i can't leave the dog okay but hunter would hunter would leave i would look at that pixelated dog and I would immediately turn around.

36:20I'd throw a bone down into the dark alley and I'd just go the opposite direction immediately without a hesitation. That's good, buddy. I'm happy to hear that. My light revealed a few wet paw prints making their way down the dusty concrete tunnel. Half Bernese and half Collie. Ripley is the sort of dog who trembles in my arms when a storm buffets the windows and needs his paws held when we brush him. I love him. I do not have much of a family or a wife or even many friends but i have ripley i could no more have turned around and gone home to an empty apartment where i would have to sob my grief away then i could flat my arms and fly he was my dog and i'd raised him since he was a puppy i wasn't going to leave him out in those woods i went in after him i didn't know what to okay what hold on what about your wife what if your wife went down those stairs yes i mean even the ripley thing it was made the dog sound very cute i now i feel bad i would probably going after the dog.

37:17If it was one of my dogs, if it was Tugboat... No way. That selfish son of a bitch. I'd be like, you know what? Fucking live here, dude. What about Crawdad? I would go down for Crawdad. I'd go down for Crawdad and Ron. Crawdad's down there like... Yeah, I would feel very sad for Crawdad. I'd be like, she's probably afraid. Tugboat, though. I'm like, that selfish son of a bitch. Probably just like, oh, I live here now. Whatever. if it makes you feel any better i also would not go in for tugboat i know that is the consensus and people online are like oh he's so cute blah blah i'm like you have no idea the selfish hatred this dog has for all of mankind tugboat likes to wait until i'm staying i'm like by myself in the kitchen like drinking coffee or whatever and then get right behind me and scream as loud as he can it's uh just unfortunate it a genetic abomination i didn't know what to expect but i knew it wouldn't be good whatever the police had found they not only kept most of the morbid details to themselves they had also lied the bunker was not demolished or even sealed off in fact looking at the occasional blue latex glove tossed aside and one or two broken police issue flashlights it seemed like the last people inside had been in a hurry to get out.

38:41Given this was where seven people had presumably died, I assumed it was someone's job to clean it all up. But the corridor looked largely untouched. Just a few meters in and manic writing started to cover the walls. The desperate scrawls of a lone survivor left there to be rediscovered like cave paintings. Most were deliberations on how to get out. Diagrams, blueprints, equations, and formula, all focused on the door and the circuits responsible for its faulty lock. I instinctively assumed they belonged to Daniel and that he'd been the last to die. What a god-awful fate for a man to outlive his children.

39:22And yet it got worse. Slowly the writing changed from equations and plans to a desperate scrawl. The same few phrases repeated over and over. Five doors. Five. Not six. Six. Didn't make it. Didn't make it. Six doors. Six. God, dude. God. Also, I just want to say I was already spooked by the idea of like gloves tossed in flashlights. I'm telling you! Ripley doesn't seem so cute. the uh the idea too that's like the police are like oh yeah i know whether things like basically broken you shouldn't have to go up there it's like they probably went up there it's all something and just left it completely untouched like fuck that we're not going back no no no also the cave painting aspect thing too is insane and watching like a person slowly mentally go insane is five did i did i tell you about my house what happened no so the house we got um previously a guy lived here with his wife since like they got married back in the 70s or whatever and then she died early 2000s and then he didn't die till like 2020 so for 18 years about he was living in the house by himself so in the basement he just started writing messages to himself and some of them are like notes like need to take out the trash need to talk to so and so about an engine part blah blah blah but as time goes on they start to get more like um remember to look at the dog today like remember to blah blah blah all this stuff and then he started to i think take notes about things that made him happy like he wrote like flowers bloom today and wrote the date and stuff like that and above all of them above like all the writing he wrote on the wall sometime in 2014 uh baby owls flew so like he was watching a nest of baby owls and then they took off that day and he wrote it down so all like his like near two decades of writing talking to himself is on the wall and uh we're leaving that up we're gonna to leave that there but wow uh you know it probably is just a nice thing of like little moments and you get like little pieces of a person's life but out of context and like not knowing anything about this that's horrifying like you you have got to try to make that into a story or something you should write that well i want to so i thought about either making a youtube video or uh making a story called the man who lived in my house uh because between that and walking through the house, I see other stuff he's done.

42:17I see stuff. For example, in the garage, there were all these pieces of wood that were drilled into the wall. And I'm like, why did he do that there? It's so random. Until I started using the cabinets and with the garage door open, a draft would come in and shut all the cabinets shut. But where he has the wood drilled is just the right place that you can rotate the wood and use it as a stopper. to keep the doors stuck open and stuff like that. So walking through the house, I've seen stuff that he's learned from living in it that now I'm relearning seeing where he's put implements and things like that.

42:55Morphing into a man on this property, like morphing into that other man would be so crazy. You know what I mean? Like a, like a thing of like when you buy someone else's home, you become the last tenant that lives there. Yeah. Something, something weird like that. That'd be like an interesting take on like almost immortality or something. like some kind of weird person that's it is that kind of what you got from the ending of the shining honestly don't know any of the shine that's fucking weird well the ending where it's like you know like oh you're the keeper you know you've always been here and then the picture where it's him from the 30s so that he is like whoever keeps the hotel because it's like he's almost reinvigorated through the hotel again and again yeah i'm not sure i mean like possibly it's just weird too he gave birth to or he like his son is the guy that has has this power and the shine too so it just it makes him feel very paranormal in nature but yeah yeah but no it's a similar idea i think of like becoming the same person over and over again but i've thought about yeah the man who lived in my house because some of those messages are kind of like what was the one that bothered me a bit it was something like i've got to quit talking about it something really vague like that Well, yeah, the things that are that are vague and you have no context for you're going to dissect that.

44:15How you know, I mean, it could you could totally misinterpret it, but it's just it takes on its own meaning to you in a weird way. Yeah, I'm also I don't want because he's still got family around. So I don't want to dox his name, but I'll text you what his name was because it adds to the thing. That was his legal name. wow really I just texted it to you on yeah yeah and I just I'm looking at it I'm saying it's very like a Star Wars character or something it's a wild name anyway you had a full on bounty hunter like a Jedi living in your house at one point it's kind of crazy he was just walking around in a Mandalorian costume yeah stop talking about it god

45:08It seemed like the kind of thing you'd find in an asylum. Psychotic rambling punctuated only by six paragraphs right at the end. Each letter was impeccably neat, and each small paragraph was topped with a beautifully drawn Christian cross. Elliot Vance, age 15, a gift guitarist. He liked boys even though he thought I didn't know. I loved him. With everything I had, he would have made a great man. Alicia Vance, age 14. She liked to paint and shoot. She had her mother's mean streak. It would have served her well in the future. Elijah Vance, age 8. The smartest of us all. These were Daniel's memorials to his family.

45:52Seeing the words lit up by my torch was a haunting insight into the overwhelming despair he'd endured. He must have realized he wouldn't get the chance to speak at his family's funerals or to write their obituaries. This was his last desperate way of making sure the world might one day know them as he did. It's real people. The words marked the end of the tunnel, standing adjacent to a trap door in the ground. It was not open, but the tunnel came to a dead end immediately afterwards and Ripley's prints disappeared at the hatch. I feared he might be in danger. Still, I stopped and looked at the bunker door 20 meters behind me.

46:30The once gloomy forest looked so bright. Even on this cloudy day, the air dotted with rain. Part of me felt like I was leaving the whole world behind as I began to climb the ladder down. I entered a large circular living space that was packed with furniture and little nooks and crannies. The walls were covered with folding beds and tables, and every inch was multifunctional. A dining space could become a sitting space, which in turn might be where someone slept or even exercised. all dependent on what particular bit of furniture you unfolded or unclipped or unfurled seven people in close quarters nowhere near enough privacy made sense they went with this cluttered overlapping use of space but it was still a large room bigger than most studio apartments and there were a few corridors that led deeper into the earth telling me the bunker had unseen depths i looked for some sign of my dog and soon found his trail but this far from the rainy copse, Ripley's prints were starting to fade.

47:31After barely a few meters, they petered out vaguely in the direction of a nearby door. I wanted to follow, but stopped myself from rushing onwards. It was unlikely Ripley was getting out any other way, and I'd do us no good getting hurt myself. I decided to take a look around and quickly spotted a dinner table. If I needed proof the The police had not bothered with the cleanup. This was it. The plates were still out, food rotten to a strange blackened husk. A child's hat lay across one place setting. The once creamy fleece turned a sickly green and yellow. The chairs had their bricks reinforced with wooden beams fitted with long grooves so that something the width of a nail could slide into them.

48:14And on each of the cushions were foul-smelling stains that looked oddly like an aspirin. I touched one with gloved hands and the material cracked audibly Whatever it was, similar stains were on the cutlery and plates And there were even handprints of it placed firmly on the tablecloth At first I thought it was blood, but that wasn't quite right It was too contained to be leaking blood On the back of one of the chairs, the stain tapered exactly where a woman's waist would be Like a near-perfect silhouette I shivered as I remembered that Miranda Vance had always been a slim woman wondered how she left her imprint on the gray fabric so is it implying that there was like a rot on them that's what i'm thinking is it feels like some kind of decay is what i'm thinking because it's not blood because yeah because at first i was like oh fuck is it dried blood no i'm thinking it's some kind of rot or decay but it also almost seems like you know like the atomic bomb like those shadows the shadows of hiroshima yeah yeah like that it kind of makes you think of some if something like that too maybe not the shadows but just in that way that's leaving silhouettes, but it does feel like a rot or like a mold or something.

49:22They were at the dinner table and the little eight-year-olds Mommy, look what I made and just opens a capsule of uranium 238. Wait, where'd you get that?

49:39Look, Mom, the power of God. If I had to say, though, I mean, I'm probably it almost seems like a fungus or like a mold. I'm thinking mold. yeah like a leftover decay or something i think a mold he's walked into a resident evil seven mansion yeah like oh yeah yeah the baker's house yeah that definitely puts a different kind of vibe into the story of the bunker so far now i'm picturing it like that like swamp house kind of thing no down in dubai you down in leesiana also i didn't even think of this how did the dog go down a ladder i don't it wasn't a ladder though it's a stairs i thought he said he went down a ladder.

50:16No, I think it's a staircase that goes down to the earth. Using my torch, British, using my torch, I saw that these stains repeated in the oddest of places. Yes, there were some on beds and blankets and even patches of plain floor exactly like you might expect in a room full of sick people. Why did one stain on the floor bear such a strong resemblance to a child huddled in a fetal position? And why was the same stuff all over the TV remote and on books on shelves and board games too. Everything from sofa cushions to TV boxes to piles of dirty laundry were covered in the same dried brownish material that gave off a foul coppery miasma.

50:57I found the jigsaw particularly baffling. Someone had set up another table with four chairs, all modified with the same back support as those by the dinner table. And a jigsaw had been laid out with four separate piles, but only one was depleted. The rest looked largely untouched, almost like someone had portioned out pieces for three other people who had absolutely no interest in going along with it. Maybe Daniel had tried to keep up morale while the family were sick. God help me. If that were true, I couldn't help but imagine the poor man sat there with his loved ones close to death, desperately trying to encourage them to click their own pieces into place while they faded in and out of consciousness okay uh so here's my theory off of that line his family was dead pretty early on and he was like playing house like setting them upright decaying in their chairs and moving them over to play jigsaw and stuff like that so so are you saying that there was like are you saying that you think that the guy killed them and he was like messing with their bodies or on accident they died so you're not you're not sure yet if you're like you think that the doctor had any uh ill intent or anything yet you think it's just like you think you maybe just went crazy then or something i mean i guess i'm trying to see like because i like that that idea of a guy like basically playing house and like positioning stuff and he's just like going about this like twisted and the stains are like the rotting corpse right exactly yeah uh i think either he went crazy and took him down there and killed them or bringing them down there got them killed somehow i feel like maybe maybe maybe the police were right it was a waterborne illness just they died but then everything that happened afterwards is like him acting like they're okay with the bodies for like a year i feel like they got sick or something and like they were existing with this illness that was like making them fucking ooze or yeah something like that could be that something about that room emanated madness the longer i stayed down there flicking the bright discs of light off my torch from one detail to another the more i wanted to leave one door had wooden beams nailed across it one sofa had been partially disassembled multiple beds had been burned and all All the light bulbs had been removed and put in a box on the kitchen countertop.

53:23Looking up at the ceiling, I finally had some insight into why the police were so confident the Vances had not survived despite never finding their bodies. Someone had jammed a human finger into one of the empty sockets. Almost like they expected it to glow with the flick of a switch. What was it about this place that had caused the police to leave and never return? not to even take that finger and test it for signs of illness or even just to confirm who it belonged to i decided it was time to hurry up and find my dog people had died in that place while i'm not superstitious can't be the only skeptic who has done the calculations in his head and realized it costs nothing to be respectful of ghosts that's a funny line that bunker was cramped terrifying and the air stinks so bad I started to worry I'd get sick myself.

54:14Serve no one any good to linger. I'd be damned if I just walk away and leave Ripley to rot down there. It's not like he could climb a ladder and get out of his own. Even if I wasn't entirely sure how he'd gotten down there in the first place. Oh, so you were right. I thought it was a staircase, but no. Yeah, so it almost seems like if his paw prints were down there, then oh my, it kind of seems like something grabbed him and took him down. Mm-hmm. Here's an even worse idea. Here's an even more terrible idea. Something has either his dog's legs or something that looks like dog legs and is making little stamps on the ground.

54:50Oh, yeah. That he thinks is his dog. Yeah. Yeah.

54:58I also like how you tried to gaslight me out of the ladder thing, and it worked. This episode's sponsored by Tushy. Tushy is the luxury bidet that your bathroom has been missing. Enjoy daily decadence with the practical benefits when you use Tushy. Yeah, I can wash my asshole with it. It squirts water. It feels good. Using Tushy gives you two-in-one benefits, reducing irritation and preventing micro tears while using less toilet paper. That means less blood coming out of your asshole because you wipe it too raw. It's cleaner, healthier, and now part of the beautiful daily routine. Things can get pretty messy in our bathrooms, and that's why I use Tushy.

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56:08That's 10 % off your first bidet. Order at hellotushy.com with promo code CREEPCAST. Thanks to Tushy for sponsoring this episode. Now let's get back to the episode. Summoning what little bravery I had left, I called out and broke the silence. Something which felt like a terrible taboo in that god-awful place. Like screaming in a graveyard. Ripley! I waited and hoped to hell I'd hear the pitter-patter of his paws, but for the longest of moments, it's only the kind of silence that makes you wonder if something or someone in the darkness is holding its breath, trying to look like just another patch of nothing.

56:43Biding its time until you finally turn around and show it your back. The TV came on with a blurt of white noise that was so loud and so sudden I cried, threw my arms up, nearly fell backwards onto a rolled out sleeping bag and looked like it had been a week in the sewer. By the time I realized what caused the noise, I could already hear a tiny rendition of Daniel Vance's voice. I realized the issue here. I need to emphasize just how little I understand anything that's... I frowned at the screen as I approached. It showed a greenish infrared view of the bunker with Daniel up front, and the dinner table behind him.

57:23It was grainy and hard to see, but I could clearly tell that his family were sitting in those chairs. Miranda was first of all a deal. Looking back, it makes perfect sense. Miranda often went to stores to fetch food for cooking. We found it behind one of the refrigerators, so that's... Oh, shit. One of the figures in the background slumped onto the table with a loud clank. It's in a plate spinning off onto the ground. Shit, shit, shit. Daniel muttered as he got up and grabbed the woman by the shoulder and set her upright. Miranda never did like my cooking. Snorted a laugh as he fussed with something at the back of the chair.

58:01The rods are much better than tape. All those hours spent taping them upright to the chairs never worked, but the rods, they feel right into the spine with a little modification. I can just slot them into the chairs. That way everyone's able to join in for dinner. I'm working on something similar for family gang night great bear trap dude

58:28so a reluctant bear trap I will say because that's brutal yeah I mean shoving the rods into their spine is insane into your family's spine so you can be like ah ha they're still she never liked my cooking also he's coexisting with something because he's like Miranda would go down and fetch food So she saw the thing first, right? So he's aware of something going on. It could also be like a mold or some growth or something back there that caused it. But what's weird is he yells out Ripley and then the TV just turns on, right? Yeah. And it's a recording of Daniel in this room doing it. So there's something going on there, right?

59:12By the way, it's probably apparent at this point, but this rules so far. christian walls man this whole story oh my god i mean even like he's he is one of the goats but even amongst his works this is one of my just the setting the stuff this is one of my favorite setup so far so i can like i can see it so plainly in my head all the details moments yeah i don't know if i don't know if you feel the same i feel like i'm just picturing the the bunker is the same from uh cloverfield lane or whatever i i was thinking about that earlier cloverfield lane Yeah, I'm thinking of the room as more like a concrete open.

59:51I have this clear image in my mind of it. Yeah, I have this. You know, it's weird. I think it's the same image in my mind that came when I first read The Road, and it talks about the father and son finding the supplies in the bunker. But I don't know where I got that original image from. Could have been the movie. It's weird or no. Yeah, because, you know, the way my mind works is it builds off of stuff I've seen in real life, right? Sure. Or like in visual storytelling. So I feel like it had to come from somewhere, but I can't remember where it came from originally. Yeah, I'm curious. Maybe it is Cloverfield Lane and I'm forgetting.

1:00:30Mine is just, when I hear like, oh, bunker, it just, whatever the first thing that pops up, I feel like it just sticks. And to me, as soon as he said bunker, I was even picturing the doctor kind of looks like John Goodman. It's like, it's like, just like kind of like, It's building that kind of visual in my head. Not saying it's just one for one. This is pretty close. Yeah. This is pretty close to what I was thinking of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Daniel wandered over to the camera, and with a grin, he lifted it from the tripod and scanned the dinner table. I saw it nearly made me drop my torch. His family were long dead.

1:01:02Gaunt faces, missing noses, lips that had receded to reveal awful grins. These were corpses, plain as day. even when viewed through such a low resolution image the only thing that made them seem remotely alive was the way their eyes still reflected the infrared back so that they glowed in the dark and yet Daniel seemed oblivious to it all tossed old Elliot's hair kissed his wife on the cheek ran a hand across one young girl's shoulder even picked the young Alexander up from his high chair and I assume he called him I don't know for sure because I looked away unwilling to see the poor boy up close.

1:01:43Eyes averted from the screen. I couldn't help but pan my torch across the same dinner table and shiver as I finally realized what all those stains were. Not quite blood, but close. Liquefying flesh. Ugh. Left alone for months, Daniel had not put his family's bodies to rest. Instead, he had moved them around from place to place, puppeted them, living life as if nothing had really changed. Looking at where those stains had settled, I saw a clear pattern emerge. He had put them to bed. He had set them dinner. He had propped them up to watch TV or gave them their favorite books. They even sat there as lifeless husks while Daniel waited for them to complete a jigsaw.

1:02:25The idea horrified me to my core. Back to work. It's obviously not a part of the original designs. No room on the other side. None of the blueprints. Elliot didn't believe me, and why would he? I have made every inch of this place, but I had not installed that door in the storage on the bottom level. I checked the cameras and some of the photos I took during the build, and the walls is just blank. But the door is there now, and it must lead somewhere. I don't know when or why it opens, but it does. And the next time, I'll be ready, because I have to know what's on the other side, and why it did this to us.

1:03:04Alone down here, often all asleep at once. Anything could have slit our throats and been done with it. But it didn't. It took its time. I have to know why. It took our radios and computers and phones, one by one. None of us noticing until it was far too late. I kept telling the kids they needed to take better care of their things. And even as they complained, I just assumed the phones were lying behind some shelf. and where else could they go in a locked bunker? But it wasn't the children at all. Looking back, there are so many signs. Who kept taking away the lights? Who kept draining the batteries in our torches?

1:03:46How long did we live with it before we finally realized we weren't alone? Was it here every step of the way? The door out of nothing that leads to nowhere. At least most of the time. Because I know for a fact it does not always open onto a blank wall. There is something behind it. I can hear it shuffling around in there. What breath rattling in its lungs. A horrible sound I hear roaming these halls when it thinks I'm asleep. Bro, this kid is so hard. It's cool because I showed up in the bunker. Yeah, it's weird because I don't know if I can trust him, you know? Like, I really don't know if I believe Daniel in this deal.

1:04:26Because also, we have to consider, too, he brought his family down and locked them in this bunker. whatever like they kind of like you know what i mean so i don't know maybe there was an end of the world coming but like it was prevented somehow because of this i'm not sure i mean there is all the calculations and stuff but now it seems like it is like this kind of house of leaves like how did this get here like i did not put this here and i'm wondering if that's also So some of what his... some of what his research on the walls, It's like the cave painting. That does read kind of House of Leaves, doesn't it?

1:04:59The whole... What does the fascination of like... What does the door do? Yeah. Yeah. This one is much more obvious, but... Yeah, Will Navidson didn't go insane. I mean, he was obsessed with the door, but he didn't go insane because of it like this one did. Maybe he's not insane per se. Maybe he thinks his family's still alive. Maybe he's more like... No, I think he believes they're dead. I mean, that's why he's also like, that's why they came in and did what they did to us. I think that he knows that this thing is there. I think he's just like, he's aware his family's dead, but he's still playing puppet with them.

1:05:35Yes, exactly. I could see that. Who kept taking away the lights? Who kept draining the batteries? That's so, man, the idea of being in a bunker and there's like a shadow there, an extra thing in there with you. That makes the writing from earlier make sense too. Five doors, not six, not six doors. What was the other thing he said in the midst of that? He was like five doors, not six. and then he said, didn't make it, didn't make it. Hmm. Yeah. Which is just him when he said here. He's like, I definitely did not put that in. Oh, I didn't make the sixth door. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. I listened to Daniel, fascinated by this strangely compelling rant when movement caught my eye.

1:06:12An infrared camera running in the dark. This image, a rolling mess of form noise. What was it I'd seen? I paused the tape and rewound. Squinting. I saw two pinpricks of light in the darkness just over Daniel's shoulder. Slowly, the image resolved itself in my mind. I knew what I was seeing, and it turned my blood to ice. Miranda Vance had turned her head, and her lifeless eyes closed as she fixed them on the back of Daniel's head. Oh my god. Not even any point leaving at this stage. I'm no doctor, but that door is giving off enough radiation to... Well, to kill a family of seven. If none of us had touched it, being in the same room was risky, but not lethal.

1:07:00But given how sick we've become, it's pretty obvious our curiosity got the better of us. One by one, and we all got too close. Or maybe not. Maybe that thing on the other side came through and did this. I don't even... Wait. What was that? Daniel turned, the camera stopped recording. the image it froze on was of a lone man right as a star in the camera's lens facing off against unknowable darkness broken only by six pairs of white glowing eyes good god bro oh that's so good so by the way implication that his family's possessed by something or they're still alive in the rotting bodies i'm not sure i mean like it could be a thing of radiation poisoning or something like something radioactive is getting them but a hundred percent one million percent the family is going to crawl out of that six fucking door like they took the dog and they're going to get our our protagonist yeah well bye Ripley you know you were a good dog you know I'll miss you dearly nice to meet you yeah I'm glad I got to know you when I did but you're you're the also it makes sense why the cops aren't going back is because it's a fucking radio it's a radioactive mess.

1:08:19The police were like, no. Yeah. No, no. No, no, that's okay. No. I became painfully aware of my position relative to the table and I had the painful premonition that if I turned, those chairs would not be empty. I would see the Vances, all of them. Daniel as well, waiting for me. Heads turned. Bodies left to rot for years in the dark. Behind me, something shifted. It breathed. loud quick i knew what it was i knew came at me so fast that when i felt something hot and wet touch my hand i screamed only for the presence to suddenly recoil but then without hesitation it leapt at me and bore me to the ground i wept as ripley licked my face oh he was shivering and worst of all silent which was not normal he was not a quiet dog not one greeting me and not one excited like he was now.

1:09:15But whatever he'd seen down here, he clung to me and dug his paws into my shoulders like he wanted to be cradled over the shoulder. Something he had been too big to do for years. You fucking idiot. I cooed in a soft whisper and even in the dark I could feel his tail wagging. Joking aside, I felt nothing but relief had finding him. Let's get the hell out of here. I picked him up, straining a little under the weight but refusing to give in to tired muscles and made for the latter. It wasn't easy climbing the three or four rungs to the hatch, but I managed it and gave the hatch a shove. First one hand, then two.

1:09:51Again and again with everything I had, still the hatch refused to budge. Shit! I cried while pounding at it with my fist, but all I achieved was a sore wrist. The hatch had jammed when, somehow, the handle had been snapped clean off. Now I'd need a pair of pliers or something to cut through the metal bar, blocking it shut my fingers couldn't move it nor could i brute force the hatch open metal bar was an inch thick and at the very least i need some tools to get at it from the side at least it's fixable i thought as i climbed back down and caught my breath on one wall i noticed a simple diagram of the bunker made in chalk it had three floors the bottom was storage daniel mentioned that before and i noticed that he had drawn through it with a large red X, and the top floor was labeled quarters, where I stood now.

1:10:42But the middle floor was labeled workshops, and it was there I realized that I'd find what I needed. There was one door that opened onto a concrete stairwell, and standing at the top, I shone my light down the spiraling guardrails, unsure of what it was I hoped to see. There were only harsh shadows and the sense of something foul rising up in the air, a smell that tickled my throat and burned a little in my lungs. Had the police even gone down this far? Did they see what I'd seen on the TV and just left? Somehow I thought it was unlikely that it had been enough to send the entire sheriff's department running.

1:11:19So was it something else that had done it? Something that had been enough to terrify dozens of armed men? Something that was almost definitely down there. Door went down quietly. At first I considered leaving Ripley behind, but after losing him the first time, I decided I'd rather risk it just to know he was right next to me. Besides, he was being quieter than I was, and I didn't feel much like going down those stairs on my own. He accompanied me with only the quiet click-clack of his paws on concrete, a sound I found deeply comforting as I barely managed to keep my torch from shaking in my hand and my breathing steady.

1:11:56Down one floor and I found the workshop exactly as you might expect. A large space filled with generators and fuel and water tanks and boilers and heaters and pretty much anything and everything that you need to survive, which you couldn't put outside due to fallout. Wires, pipes, and tubes ran from one end of the room to the other, and even years later, most of the machinery still hummed in the pitch black emptiness, an idea I found deeply unsettling. Taking one look at the strange tangle of harsh shapes and and industrial figures looming out of the walls and floor. I shivered and looked around, quickly finding a small area Daniel had cordoned off for his own use.

1:12:36But a fifth of the total floor space, there was a large workbench and some seriously high-end machining equipment, all very well used. Lathes, buzz saws, drills, belt sanders, welding torches, everything a man needed to do it himself. Daniel had been busy. i'm not sure exactly what it was he'd been working but there was an arm on the bench it's a i know i know it's like a scary visual but the uh the reading of all the equipment i thought he had been building contraptions or like creatures or something and it's like my prized work an arm I wonder, do you think it's Daniel's arm? Could be. Good chance.

1:13:26Very good chance. It sat atop a pile of papers that had slowly turned brown over the years until the whole thing looked like it had been soaked in tobacco sped. On the whiteboard was a faded but still visible diagram of what looked to me like a ball and socket joint. I thought of the tape, Daniel's little mechanism to keep his family upright, then looked at the arm and suppressed a momentary gag reflex. I don't know if Dan had been working on posable limbs or just a way to put the decomposing remains back together after they started to fall apart. But the size of the arm suggested a preteen child.

1:13:59Oh, God. They left it out on the surface like it was a disassembled clock. He was also missing a finger. Just how crazy was he? I wondered as I pinched my nose with one hand and began overturning boxes looking for a hefty pair of pliers or maybe a hacksaw. Ripley backed away from the noise, but once I made sure he wasn't going anywhere, I carried on grabbing and pulling at box after box, hoping I'd find what I was looking for. Anything to break that metal bar. In the end, I managed to get a pair of bolt cutters, a crowbar, and a heavy-duty pair of pliers. One went in my pocket, one went down the back of my jeans, and the other was clutched in my fist.

1:14:40Too large to be tucked away in my clothes. The bolt cutters felt hefty in my hand, which was a bit of comfort, but that feeling didn't last long. Something moved in the darkness. Out there in the twisted jungle of shadows cast by all those pipes and wires that ran from one machine to the next, a figure moved. Thin, but unmistakably human in its outline. I couldn't help but remember what I'd seen on that tape. Surely it couldn't have been real. Maybe Daniel had rigged something up. Some fishing wire and a motor, maybe. The idea that those bodies had been moving on their own. Couldn't be sure of that, could I?

1:15:19It was a frightening idea. While my mind had latched onto out of sheer panic. That was all. Then I saw them. A pair of white pinpricks reflecting back at me from the depths of that cluttered room. Ripley, already behind me, head nuzzled into my leg, pushed even closer against me and let out a barely audible whine under his breath. The behavior of a dog who was terrified, close to pissing himself with fear. Just a bit of metal, I told myself as the light shook so violently in my hand I struggled to see straight just two shiny bits of metal. They blinked and began to come towards me. Oh, God. If I had any doubts left, they were dispersed by the sight of a pale white hand emerging into the light.

1:16:04I ran straight to the stairs and went to climb them, but only one or two steps in and I saw something gripping the handrail on the top floor. Moldy clump of flesh, only just recognizable as a fist. The flesh withered until the fingers were basically bone. Without meaning to, I brought my light up out of habit and saw the bloated face of a hairless corpse glaring down at me. I couldn't even tell you if it had been a teenage girl or a 60-year-old Daniel. Either way, I instinctively turned and found another body shambling towards me out of the workshop. I was trapped. Nowhere to go. By the feel of warm fluid on the back of my leg, I could tell Ripley had finally pissed himself.

1:16:44An adult dog, tail between his legs, shivering like a puppy and desperate to be picked up. God, I needed him to just stay together for a little longer. I couldn't take him in my arms, but I couldn't leave him behind either. With nowhere to go, I ran down and entered storage. there was the temptation to stop once i hit the bottom down here the air was thicker and the sounds of my breathing were muted somehow distant but i only had to look back up to see three pairs of eyes glaring down at me so without giving any of it much further thought i barreled down the corridor and stumbled onto a door at random opening it i saw what looked like your standard storage room only most of the shelves had been overturned and the food left to rot on the floor one or two shelving units were still upright though and their shelves were covered in tall opaque boxes that made them a fantastic hiding spot that i decided would have to be where i crouched down turned off my light i was already inside when i realized that wasn't all that was in there the door almost looked normal i guess what a menacing sentence i know i hate that i hate that uncanniness of that oh man gosh this is excellent this story is excellent because it's in my head i'm like there's no way he would ever go further down but then you put a threat that makes him go further down which lets us see the rest of the layout and stuff and also the presentation where we had a map of it so we know what's coming while he's in the workshop like it's all it's all very well done this is an excellent story i could see why daniel must have been confused by because it looked a little bit like all the other doors down there but it was different too it was too tall and too wide about a foot and a half off the ground and the metal rusted in its entirety like it had aged out of sync with everything else down there all around the jam was a profusion of wet soppy moss like the kind you find hanging off trees in a swamp and every few seconds the door would leak something strange and oily like the kind of thing you find in a parking lot on a rainy day Of course, that wasn't too strange in itself, but the leak was horizontal, defying gravity so that every few seconds, a large glob of the stuff would whip across the room and slap into the wall opposite, creating a puddle about the size of a man that defied all reason.

1:19:11Interesting, so it's like gravity's thrown down there. Remembering Daniel's words about radiation, I instinctively inched away from this puddle and the door on the opposite wall, backing myself into the darkest, quietest corner I could while I pulled Ripley behind me and hoped hell he wouldn't give me away. Once I was in there, I turned off my light and waited. It must have taken longer than I thought to hide in the spot because it was barely two seconds later when a few figures entered the room. It was pitch black after I turned off my torch, but they made enough noise to let me know that at least two of them had stumbled in after me.

1:19:45I stayed there, unable to see anything, not sure if they were heading straight for me or just getting ready to leave, forced to hold out and let luck decide my fate when i finally heard something scrape against the wall barely two feet from where i stood i gave up and switched my light on desperate to know what was coming for me sound had been terribly misleading daniel vance was no more than six inches from my face

1:20:16he hissed from a toothless and cracked mouth a living corpse just like the others somehow a flash of intelligence remained in those wide terrified eyes and then i heard it the creaking of a door without even thinking i turned the light and saw it on the wall i saw it open behind the strange still there was more than just plain old concrete much more. I saw a raging gullet of flesh, a ringed tube of pulsing muscle lined with teeth the size of hands, a spiraling descent into madness, hot-foted air washed into the room, buffeting me and the rotting corpses, all of us paralyzed by what we were seeing, even if for most of the figures besides Daniel and myself, they didn't have eyes to see with.

1:21:02What the fuck? I muttered, unable to take my eyes from the flesh tube beyond the doorway. It's coming. Daniel whispered as he grabbed me with one fist and hurled me out of the room. I hit the floor and skidded along a slick fluid left by Vance's footprints, the smell of which turned my stomach. Perhaps the worst detail was that it was cold. I don't know why, I just expected whatever oozed off of them to be feverishly hot, but it wasn't. It soaked my shirt like I'd fallen into a muddy puddle. It's coming. This voice wasn't Daniel's. I couldn't say for sure, but it sounded like a child's whisper.

1:21:41One by one, the body shuffled over to the open door and knelt before it. I don't know why, but I got the impression the others had lost pretty much everything left of their minds, but Daniel remained aware. He looked back at me once more and spoke before he pressed his head to the floor in supplication with the others. The only thing we did wrong was being here for it, to torture. It didn't need a reason, just an opportunity. leave it won't let us go it won't even let us die and if it catches you it won't let you go either his forehead kissed the dirt and something reached through the door and gripped his head in its palm the way you or i might pick up an apple in full panic i ran over and grabbed my dog and bolt cutters and i ran like my legs were pistons machines whose signals of exhaustion and fatigue could not slow me down or cause me to fall.

1:22:40I had to move. I had to leave. The hand that had grabbed Daniel, the side of it flushed my mind clean like some kind of enema. It hurt to see the image replay in my mind. There was nothing else in my head echoing around except the sight of fingers with one too many knuckles and nails as large as a smartphone. I reached the top floor and nearly collapsed from breathlessness, but I wouldn't let myself stay down for long. I crawled over to the ladder and climbed up and immediately went to work trying to cut the metal lock. It was hell with just one hand, the other clinging to the torch that I kept frantically pointing at the door behind me, and it wasn't long before I fumbled one too many times and dropped my only source of light.

1:23:22I mewed, but there was no time to look for it. I had to get out, and I had to get out fast. I couldn't see, but I was sure I could hear something climbing up those stairs, not the steady thump thump of human feet. No, this was different. This was a rapid pitter patter of a spider, maybe. Something with hundreds of feet or hands or God knows what skittering along the floor and walls and ceiling, pulling itself along with a body whose mere shape would offend God. Using all my strength, I leaned hard on the bolt cutters and at last, the bolt gave. I threw the hatch open and got just enough ambient light to see Ripley hovering at the bottom of the ladder, growling ineffectually at the doorway.

1:23:59I crouched down, scooped him up, and fled up the ladder so quickly that my muscles turned to jelly at the top and I fell over onto my hands and knees. But still, I was out. The long corridor covered in writing was ahead of me, and at the very end, a doorway capped now by the tired blue light of a full moon. Ripley needed no encouragement. He whipped down the corridor with canine speed and I followed at a broken and stumbling crawl, eventually shouldering past the open door and collapsing onto the forest floor. For a few seconds, I drifted in and out of consciousness. But when I looked up and saw the canopy overhead moving, branches backlit by a full moon, I snapped awake and glared down at something gripping my ankle.

1:24:41Oh shit. The hand reached out of the dark and seized me and was slowly dragging me back into the earth below. Whatever it was, most of its body lurked out of sight in the shadows beyond the doorway. but the hand that crushed my leg was the size of my torso and an arm that looked like it belonged to a mole rat.

1:25:04God damn it. Officer Mole? Yes! I told you not to enter my heart at night. All right. Now that, that's my bear trap. Be-be-be-bear trap. That's a bear trap. I've hit two heavy ones this episode. That one was like a prophetic pull. Oh, my gosh. I know what it's implying under dwellers and stuff like that, but just the fact that I brought him. Oh, his equation did in fact say mole people. I struck it with my own fist. I dug my nails in. I cried and kicked and screamed, but nothing could stop it. From behind the door, something like a face grinned and leered at me with joy. It was taking its time, sure enough, pulling me in so slowly that it gave my mind all the time in the world to appreciate the nightmare that awaited me.

1:26:02I think if, in that moment, you'd given me a gun, I would have shot myself because God helped me. I couldn't escape the look in Daniel's eyes. How he knelt to worship this thing like a man who knew that hope or pride or joy or anything with even a hint of goodness to it was so far out of reach for him it might as well be a dream. How long was this thing going to keep them down there? How long did it intend to keep me? I wept like a child, feeling like my mind was slowly crackling as I tried everything to stop it from pulling me into the shadows. I kicked at the earth. I dug into it, using my hands, looking for a root or a pipe or anything to hold onto.

1:26:38Nothing. Nothing. I did what slowed it down. I was no more than a foot from the doorway when Ripley appeared. A dog afraid of hoovers and plastic bags and doors that move on their own. A dog who once got stared down by a particularly feisty rabbit who stopped mid-chase and turned around, baffling the predator on its tail. A dog you couldn't even watch scary movies around. And he lunged at the arm like he was a wolf. Hey! Like he'd always been one. Atta boy, Ripley. and while he didn't quite break the skin the pressure was enough to make the thing's grip weaken and I slid my leg out unable to stand I knelt and grabbed the dog pulled as hard as I could and now that thing bled at last as the pressure of the jaws and the sliding teeth ripped into its flesh together at last Ripley and I were let go and sat rolling backwards head over heels I wasted no time waiting or looking or processing I heaved the dog to my chest and crawled until I passed out, making it maybe half a kilometer away.

1:27:44Only when I could no longer see the door did I let myself fall to the ground face first, give up consciousness. The doctor said I had pneumonia, which I suppose made some kind of sense. I might have even believed them were it not for the sheriff's visit, asking strange questions of me as I lay in bed about what I may or may not have seen. and I dismissed them to the best of my ability. I wasn't interested in chasing that particular nightmare down, figuring out if it had been real or not, at least not while I lay there half drowning in my own infection. To be fair, I had at least some sympathy for why the police had done so little to seal that place off.

1:28:25I have, on occasion, thought about going and doing the job myself, but to this day I still have nightmares about being pulled into the dark beyond that door. Not just the bunker door, the one I narrowly avoided at the end, but the one below. What I saw was a kind of madness, I'm sure of it. And I often think of Daniel's words. It didn't need a reason, just an opportunity. Somehow, the Vances were that opportunity. Maybe they built their bunker on a ley line, or a weak spot between dimensions, or the side of former satanic rituals. Not sure if it even matters. They went into the dark thinking it'd be a safe place to wait out the world's troubles, but something had been down there waiting for them.

1:29:11Waiting for a chance to get out a family of seven people to lock them in and deprive them of escape and slowly take from them everything it could. I've moved since then. Couldn't help it. It wasn't just the memories you see. It was the shortwave radio I kept in my basement. Something my father passed on to me when I was just a boy. God, I'd forgotten about it. At least until I woke up one day to the sound of a blaring white noise down in the dark. Buried in that sound was the faint whispering of a man. His voice barely recognizable, but unmistakably is.

1:29:56And that is the end. My God. Did you read the let them go? Yeah, I did. Okay. wow uh my god you know what a great story dude one thing i love about christian wallace's work is the pacing but not only that but the way that he does exposition and the build-up to where like he spent it seems like he spends a lot of the very beginning of the stories instead of just being like i'm going down to this deal and then you get a lot of the exposition of like oh yeah like when you're down there you get the exposition it's like i like that you get a lot of this like a little bit of backstory exposition of what's happening and then it just seems like also my dog and like i think that it just takes it takes a turn it's like my dog went missing and he's down in that very bunker yeah that's a fun way to present that yeah all of the all the little because sometimes story writers have trouble with their connectors how it's like i want the character to do this and i want them to see this thing and they need to go here and it needs to be this but needs to be believable and sometimes the things that will push the character to those different points doesn't work as well but christian wallace doesn't have that problem because it's like okay well he loves this dog he establishes how much he loves the dog so he goes into the first layer uh well now he's trapped he has to go the second to get supplies and now he has to go the third because there's something on the second so it's everything flows very well and you get to see all the set pieces and it feels natural and it keeps the tension up there's never a point where you're like well i don't know about that because a lesser storyteller would be like i was in the first floor but i had to know what happened to the family so i go down to the second where it's like sure we the reader wants to know what happened to the family but no way this guy would right um so everything feels very reasonable why do you think that why do you think the tv just turned on randomly there i feel like i almost feel like i missed a line or like i'm forgetting a line about like yeah i feel like i'm maybe i didn't read it right i like wonder if in the shadow of the guy turned it on or something or what it seems like knowing that daniel is down there he's still which also i just want to say how god how like daunting and horrifying is that of like your family your family are husk like they're basically just zombies that just won't die right and you are rotting with them and you're but you're still conscious and you're still able to understand all of this shit and i love that daniel's character was not used as a vessel to like kill he was used as a vessel to be like you get the fuck out of here don't end up like us which is which is kind of interesting too because the parallel of like daniel and his family were doomsday preppers they went they went into the dark to hide for the troubles of the world right but they found a bunch of evil or whatever it almost seems it's just it's like a it's like a a fun way for that character who did that to go out and just be like, don't live your life like this.

1:32:57And like, basically like get out of here, which I think still to me translates to something of like, don't live in fear and get out of, get out of this place. You know what I mean? What was the, um, it, there was a picture of,

1:33:15what am I trying to think of? It was, it was, it was, why am I stupid? I was about to say something and then I completely, I hate it when that happens. Yeah. Oh yeah. The, the, the door opened up and it was like a throat, right? It was like this thing of twist that reminded me of Dionia house a lot. Yeah. Dionia house. I know that I say this probably every other fucking podcast, but the final prayer or something where it's like an entity living in the hills, living in the ground or something, but there's some arm or something that comes out of it. and it's like keeping them in a purgatory. I like that thing that Daniel says, it didn't need a reason, just an opportunity.

1:33:57It's just something that causes, you know. It's just evil. Death, misery, decay. Yeah, it's a pure wickedness, which goes off of what you were saying, how it's like the family was paranoid of the world, something going wrong with it, but then they found the essence of wrong down in their hiding hole, right? Yeah. Well, in the hiding hole, I think that it's interesting that the creature, the sixth door is like an appendage. It almost seems like of this thing that just appears. So it's like uncanny. It's like luring people in, but it's like you are trying to hide from the unknowns from like the, an unknown precedent, like an unknown accident that would happen.

1:34:33Right. You're trying to prepare yourself for something that could happen. And then of course the thing they go down there for, they're completely unprepared for, I think it's just kind of an interesting, uh, I also like the, uh, which this is, this is going to sound really rude. People aren't going to be happy with this. my one critique is I think the dog should have died. I knew it. I knew you would fall in line. You know what's weird is because I am so happy the dog didn't die. I feel like my heart was fluttering. Here's why. Here's why. Here's why. Because there is a cautionary aura to the family, right?

1:35:15Like they feared the world, so they hid from the world, and they found something beneath the world. And we see Daniel, who is being punished for that, and is witnessing the punishment of his family. Because it's almost a curse, or it is a curse, that he keeps his consciousness. Like if he was made into some mindless zombie puppet thing, that would probably be better than the alternative where he's completely aware of what's going on, that his family's down there. even in the final moments of the story when he's listening to a shortwave radio and he can hear daniel saying let them go let them go he has to watch his family be kept in this puppet state um which is like a hell of it's literally a hell of his own making right um and then there is a weird connection established between daniel and our author because similarly the author went into this bunker for something he loves, right?

1:36:15The dog. So we have Daniel goes down there to preserve something he loves. And we have the author that goes down there to preserve something he loves. But in both cases, going down there is a narratively moral wrong, right? Do not go into the bunker. Do not go away. Maybe for author, it wasn't necessarily to escape the world, but he is going into something he knows he shouldn't go into, right? even if it's for good reasons to help what he wants so that scene where Daniel's speaking to the author and he's like get out of here that is like Daniel getting the author to do what he could not to leave but nevertheless our author goes in so I feel like if in that final moment where the dog came over and bit the hand and then if then the dog was dragged down and maybe our author passes out or gets away or whatever and the police find him it's like yeah because he wanted to go down there, something he loved paid the price.

1:37:14I feel like that would be the final bow tie between him and Daniel. I feel like it worked a bit better. I feel like it's a bit too easy for him to go down there and there'd be no consequences. Right. Oh, sure. No, I mean, I, you know, I think going on top of that too, like, I think like, and this is all hindsight, whatever, just subjective bullshit, but like, sure, sure. Daniel being more of like, maybe not like less of us, like, like picturing him up to is like he was just like you know like basically like not a mentally unwell man but just something where it's like expecting the worst always he believed that it was going to go it was more of a detriment right and then that way later when he's sitting there with his dead family it almost feels like you infect and you burden your family with that kind of mentality or you change them you zombify them into that state of belief or something right the same way that with our protagonist it would have been something funny if it were not funny but it would have been something entertaining if he was a conspiratorial guy as well except maybe like doomsday he was just like they're not telling us these things it's another case that they're just covering up or whatever some type of conspiratorial thing to where he goes out into the bunker which is uh similar to daniel going down for his own reasons and then he has to like have that kind of price basically having some kind of motive to where our protagonist could learn where Daniel could not.

1:38:36Like the yin and yang I think need to have the opposites right there. It would have probably felt a bit more satisfying or something where it's just like don't go digging for things that are going to get you in trouble or yada yada yada which I'm paraphrasing and it probably sounds stupid but I do I agree is what I'm saying with you. I think like it is a bit too convenient of like I'm going down here I do wish they had a bit more motive of being like this is there's just something weird or like these fucking cops are covering something up. Something that is more about like something larger than himself is putting others in risk the same way that like a doomsday thing of like an atom bomb dropping or something and fending for yourself or helping your family.

1:39:16I feel like it's also a bit like the dog bites it and then it bleeds and it lets go. It's like, okay, so this is a creature that you can hurt and you can make a bleed and stuff. I think it'd make more sense if the dog biting it is, was more of a sacrifice. It would be heavier. It would be heavier if the dog... It's not like the thing bleeds. The dog's just like, oh, okay, I'll take this instead. So it'd be like the dog's sacrifice in itself to save him, which it kind of does. It puts its life on the line to bite him. I think that if you have the dog get like an ounce of courage, because it's kind of a funny character growth for the dog of like, you know, dog's a big wimp and then he steps up.

1:39:57But if it does nothing, it's still like a noble gesture. I thought that what it was going to happen as daniel was going to pop up and like grab it or something like try no no no the the monster oh the monster like he was going to bring it down with him yeah yeah something of just being like this is my burden to carry and he steals off yeah like that kind of thing like i to me that would have been also a fun way to like tie that together uh because yeah i agree then it just feels like it's the thing isn't it wasn't hurt or something because yeah with these like big i don't know like monstrous deity kind of things.

1:40:33You almost want to see like, to me, it's always effective when it's like man-made things cannot hurt this thing. Like a human being could do nothing to the source, which is also why it feels like, of course he like bows to it because also it might be like fucking with his family or something. And of course, Daniel's going to do whatever he can just to keep. Yeah. He can't, he can't do anything other than supplicate himself. There's no resistance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think um that I also want to clarify that my critiques of the story saying the dog should die because I feel so I feel bad sometimes when we read a great story and I spend most of the time talking about critique the reason that's all I have to talk about is because everything else about the story banged the workshop segment the house the living room the like it was excellent it was such a good story it's also just part of the to me that's part of the fun of reading a story I mean how many times have you seen a movie where stuff you're talking about things and you're just like it would have been cool if they would have done this yeah it's just the idea that's because i like it yeah it's definitely not undermining or trying to undermine the work it's just something of like these are just like little subjective thoughts because also you can implement these things and they could suck you know like who yeah who knows they're it's just fun to riff and all that kind of stuff so definitely uh you know with these things too i will say this i i am a proponent in most media that the dogs should probably die more often because dogs are like an untouchable thing for people.

1:41:55Yeah, they're the ultimate persona of innocence. Yeah, because they're the ultimate persona of innocence. But if the point of your story is that the personification of innocence is being injured, then you have to kill the thing that is totally innocent, right? The best example of that, at which I didn't even realize this happened until I tried to watch the movie with my wife who hates it when dogs die in movies. and no country for old men like three dogs die and it makes sense in that movie because the whole movie is about the laws of good good guy bad guy you know the sheriff riding in to clean up the town that doesn't work here like things die even if they don't deserve it so the dogs die in their works and i feel like there's too many horror movies that can get through with like a message like that and it be effective but they won't kill the dog because people are going to be uncomfortable about it because people need to feel comfortable in a genre that the root word is horrific and it drives me up a lot sometimes i i i see what you're coming from i think it all just comes down to like what is the point it's kind of i think it's the same thing of like i don't know having like sexually sexual assault in the movie or like you know child death there's these things that are just kind of untouchable things that are just like you shouldn't include them it just seems say cruel but i mean i think that it just it just it comes down to the intention like if you just randomly kill these things you randomly do this stuff it feels like a fetish or it feels like you're fetishizing something and it's for it's like more for the director i know like a critique that my wife has with a lot of stuff that has like overly sexual assault type stuff is it feels like it's a fetish for the director or it feels like it's for men yeah or something which i agree but i do think that there's elements where it is like important it is a horrific thing that can happen but it's the same thing with like a dog death or something.

1:43:42Does it, or is it just like a cheap way to make you feel something? Does it serve? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think I honestly, I feel like modern movies are more liable to kill a kid than they would a dog. Oh, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. Yeah. Um, and I feel like that's weird. I feel like I don't like that. Well, you even see it in like social media posts too, about people like, you'll hear like, it's something where it's like the Ruby Frankie thing where she like abused her children or whatever. That was big media attention. But like, sometimes i still feel like you hear about like somebody like like a dog abuser will be hung from the gallows before like a person that a child abuser was yeah like a youtuber who hits their kids or something like that which is just clarify they're both bad they're both awful nothing is good but it's just crazy that a human life it's just it's just that kind of there's a weird there's a weird disparity between like innocence of like the young and innocence of animals yeah they're both innocent but it's weird that people are so uncomfortable by the death of an animal and not the death of a child a lot of times in horror movie senses which i don't know there's probably some greater conversation to be had with that but yeah i feel like the dog should die more i feel like not it shouldn't be gratuitous like anything should be gratuitous but i feel like i think the purpose of your story is a loss of innocence and you have to lose the innocence you know i think yeah i and i think that the only way i think i agree with you on that because in this one i do like that the dog stepped up like just as like this short film went because this was like a very punchy short story yeah i like that the dog made it out it was a nice ending even though like him coming there and all that stuff is his fault i think that you have him get stripped of that if if he went there for a selfish or like like some kind of reason that is like you should plenty of signs warn that you shouldn't have went down there which there was a couple here but i do think like uh if if he was a guy that was just like fuck this i'm doing it anyways they're hiding something blah blah blah and you in that loss has to stay with you forever i think it feels so much more like deserve like this is like a punishment this is something that like you could have avoided this if you just stepped out of your own way if you weren't so selfish yada yada yada that kind of stuff but i mean i don't know people might totally agree with you too and some people i know will get comments being like you know it just seems gratuitous there should never be a reason for it but i think that that's all open for discussion and that's the thing too is it's all subjective you know like it's just your opinion and what you think and all that kind of stuff.

1:46:00So I'll say, um, um, a couple notes, like I remember with the dog dying thing, I was writing the story one time I was telling Kayla about it and had a dog dying in there. She's like, you can't do that. And I'm like, well, it's like a flesh thing that consumes all it's like consumed the family and all the wildlife and stuff like that around the house. So, you know, the family had a dog. So I see the dog and she was like, well, you can't kill the dog. I'm like, okay, so you want it to kill everything, but the dog, she's like, yeah, you have to write a reason why didn't kill the dog like that's stupid but also i'm reading through the comments of the post and someone raised an interesting point they're like perhaps uh daniel did find a way to survive the apocalypse that's about to come like his family has immortality now but it's not the way interesting which is an interesting thought like a monkey's paul kind of thing yeah yeah like he like he did find equation like oh if we build a bunker here if we do this we'll survive the coming apocalypse and they will it's just not in a good way um also i say all that stuff about the dog dying and i'm like who's this for why would they kill the dog and then i read i read some of these comments and then where was that one that cracked me up it was like um i was starting to do the same thing here until the paragraph about ripley i audibly went well i'd do that i would do the exact same thing to save my doggo from being stuck somewhere yeah i mean it's definitely gonna be you know i mean it's just that there it's it's pure innocence you know that's the thing there's also you know yeah there's multiple people asking what the last part about the radio meant and if they could get some clarification about the radio and it's like okay maybe you can't kill the dog maybe these people would get way too fired up if you killed the dog i think people would you People fucking, they get, they do.

1:47:54It's fucking. See, I'm not, yeah, I'm not critiquing Christian Wallace for not killing the dog because like people get mad about it. I'm critiquing the audiences to be like, you got to let the dog die more. You got to just be okay with some dog deaths. Okay. I love dogs too, but I also love people. And when I read a horror story, they both got to go. That's just part of it. They both got to go. Nobody bats an eye when a guy gets his fucking head blown off. For sure. No. Do you know how many horrific mutilations of men I've seen in movies? And believe it or not, all of my guy friends, men. So, you know, maybe I don't want that to happen to him.

1:48:33Don't want that to happen to dogs. Show me it in a movie. I'm glad though. Christian Wallace, three for three, man. I think we've covered more than three of his. Have we? I am positive we've covered more than three of his. Well, if we have, then I mean, it's fuck. He's a perfect hitter in my book right now. I think that there are great links to at least for reading you know I know I know like a lot of people that listen to this podcast they really want longer big episodes but like somebody that can can that can like give a story in such a in such a fucking lean punchy like it just doesn't have a lot of fat it's just like right to the jugular I think is just extremely impressive and it just makes for like a fun casual reading like this is the great which is also why I want to say be sure to pick up if you are interested in more of like reading his stuff be sure to support his uh his book will like i said we'll leave it in the description below these are going to be like just such fun like you know you're at work or before bed or all that kind of stuff these just like real fun easily easily digestible stories that i think leave a really fun uh mystery or you know they leave a nice thought loop in your head of just thinking about the story yeah the guy is like man he punches with some stuff he's an all-timer oh yeah the one about uh the deer meat the dad eating deer meat that was christian wallace yeah okay so he's got four yeah we've it's i'm glad you know what though it's been a while it's it's easily been like a i feel like a year since we've read one of his things well the deer meat one wasn't a year ago but other than oh oh sorry yeah then whatever but uh just ignore everything you just said yeah i don't I thought we were talking about another story.

1:50:11Yeah, it's good stuff. What can I say? Thanks for listening on audio platforms, guys. We appreciate you. Also, thank you to our patrons for supporting the channel and getting all the bonus episodes. We appreciate that as well. Until the next time, guys, be sure to check out Christian Wallace's website. We'll leave some links to his website or where you can find his book below. And just support the author. If it wasn't for them, we wouldn't be reading the story. So until next time, guys, stay creeped. We'll see you in the next one. Stay creeped and look, just got to kill the dog. Okay. Got to kill the dog more.

1:50:43So get on that. Thank you. Bye.

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