Hello, ho, ho! Here's an important message from Network Rail for anyone who's travelling by train this Christmas and New Year.

We'll be working over the festive period to make improvements to the railway. Most of the network remains open, but some train services will be affected from Sunday the 25th of December until Monday the 2nd of January.

So, to keep your festive plans on track, please check before you travel at nationalrail.co.uk slash Christmas.

I'm Ali Weiss and on my podcast Tales of Taboo, I gather anonymous confessions from my listeners around the world. They've existed in elusive subcultures, ventured down the road less traveled, made serious mistakes and achieved extraordinary victories.

These stories are raw, honest, even downright shocking sometimes, but always deliver the most incredible life lessons.

Tales of Taboo is a unique exploration of why we're so afraid to be different. Because, quite frankly, it's a lot more fun on the dark side.

Listen to new episodes of Tales of Taboo every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts.

Forever!

You all know me, it's Ben Acker, co-creator of the Thrilling Adventure Hour. I'm back in your feed today to remind you or to let you know if you missed last time that I've written a book.

A collection of campfire tales, ghost stories, and spook-use for kids ten and up, but like all the way up, the cutoff is 96. Sorry, 97-year-olds, it's too scary.

Honestly though, the book is really for you guys, the thrill heads, the spark-sows, the beyond believers. The book? Oh, it's called Stories to Keep You Alive Despite Vampires, and as I say, it couldn't be more for you, adventure-cuteers.

And that's why I'm here. I wanted to share it with you first. Before people's kids get their hands on it, I wanted you to get your ears on it.

If it's your thing, do me a favor and pre-order a copy. Pre-ordering makes a big difference in the publishing world, it would help me out. I'd do it for you, you know. You know I would do it for you.

So, peer to yourself a copy and get copies for weird kids, Halloween adults, stock your local library, some people are doing that.

You can pre-order stories to keep you alive despite vampires anywhere from Amazon to your local bookshop. If you want to link, here's a link.

I couldn't be proud of this book and I couldn't appreciate you listeners more, and that's why I'm doing this. And now I honestly couldn't be more excited than to have a work-to-use player read you one of the pieces from Simon & Schuster's Future Best Seller, Stories to Keep You Alive Despite Vampires.

By this country's favorite son, Ben Ackert. Here's Mark of Injection with a story called Love and Lockets.

Love and Lockets. From Stories to Keep You Alive Despite Vampires by Ben Ackert.

Colder and Tenney had been dating for a year and a half when Colder saw the necklace, a silver Saturn-shaped locket on a chain, and just had to have it. On their second anniversary he told Tenney,

you are my whole world and gave them the necklace. Tenney loved it, never suspecting it held a secret. Tenney wore the necklace every day, never knowing that it opened, much less what was inside. It could have been anything, not anything, anything smaller than a locket.

It could have been for one example, an engagement ring. It could have been for another extremely dissimilar example, a bunch of spider eggs.

It could have been a speckled onyx engagement ring, a vocative of outer space on a gold band. It could have been up to 250 spider eggs deposited into a brown silk sack produced by a common house spider for the purpose of holding up to 250 eggs, where they laid inside the sack and the sack stuffed inside the locket.

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