319: And the Call Was Coming from the Basement

This American Life

Society & Culture, News, Politics, Arts

4.6 • 88.8K Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2023

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For the lead up to Halloween, scary stories that are all true. Zombie raccoons, haunted houses—real haunted houses!—and things that go "EEEEK!!!" in the night. Plus, a story by David Sedaris in which he walks among the dead.

Ira and Albert Donnay read a true ghost story that appeared in a medical journal in 1921. A "Mrs. H" and her family moved into an old rambling house and strange apparitions started appearing, until her brother-in-law figured out the real cause of the ghostly presences. (6 minutes)
Act One: Some of the scariest stories happen when fluffy, innocent creatures turn murderously evil. Producer Alex Blumberg tells one such story, about a raccoon gone bad. (13 minutes)
Act Two: Writer Bill Eville and his brother are picked up on the side of the road late at night, and not taken to their destination. (10 minutes)
Act Three: We set up a special 800-number for listeners to call with their true-life scary stories. More than 500 people called. The scariest stories we got all had one thing in common. (9 minutes)
Act Four: One Halloween, David Sedaris decides to skip all the fake monsters and ghosts and zombies and visit the real thing: dead people, in a morgue. (14 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

Transcript

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0:00.0	Why hold on my hand a ghost story that comes from a publication that is not really known
0:06.3	for its tales of the supernatural.
0:08.0	I'm talking about the American Journal of Ophthalmology, a medical journal.
0:13.2	This is from a 1921 edition.
0:15.3	In just case your subscription laps during World War I, I'm just going to read from one
0:20.6	of these articles.
0:21.6	This is a letter that a doctor sent in from one of his patients actually this letter.
0:26.7	She's identified as Mrs. H and in the letter she's describing a very strange series
0:31.8	of events that happened to her and her family starting when they moved into a rambling
0:34.8	old house on November 15th, 1921.
0:38.6	This house was out of repair, had no electricity, was lit by gas lights, very gloomy house.
0:44.8	Albert Dene is the person who unearthed this article and he agreed to come into the studio
0:48.8	and read from Mrs. H's account of what happened to them.
0:53.4	Mr. H and I had not been in the house more than a couple of days when we felt very depressed.
0:59.2	The house was overpoweringly quiet.
1:01.7	The servants walked about on thickly carpeted floors so quietly that I could not even hear
1:06.2	them at their work.
1:07.5	I love how no story of this area can be complete without servants padding about it.
1:13.4	And they had many servants.
1:15.5	One morning I heard footsteps in the room over my head.
1:18.2	I hurried up the stairs.
1:20.1	To my surprise the room was empty.
	...

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