Hey again, R. L. Stein story club members. I'm Ivy, your host with the most, and keeper of those

strange and spooky tales from the hidden vault of R. L. Stein. Today is another chilling tale.

This eerie tale story club members might make you hope you don't get woken up in the

middle of the night. It's one I call bump, bump, bump, bump in the night. As the clock struck

midnight, an unusual rhythmic sound woke up Blake Curtis, it had sounded like a bump, bump, bump.

Blake's first thought was that it was a windstorm outside and maybe the branch of a tree was hitting the house

He didn't know this house that well. This was his first night in it after all

He just moved to a new town school was gonna start next week

Blake was tired from moving boxes all day and now something was waking him up in the dead of night

Blake climbed out of bed with a sigh and wandered through the dark house.

His parents were asleep in front of the TV.

On the screen, a Netflix message asked if they were still watching.

No, they clearly weren't.

They'd binge-watched their show into a coma.

His dad woke up in mid-snore.

What are you doing up? I couldn't sleep. Oh,

there's some melatonin in the bathroom. Take one of those. They help. No, I went to sleep just fine.

Something woke me up. Listen. Blake's mom woke up too. Honey, what's going on? Blake says

there's a noise. Yeah, he said, listen. They listened. Nothing. Hey, it's an old house,

and they tend to settle in the middle of the night. You're just not used to it yet. This was not

the sound of a house settling. Blake said, our other house did that and it didn't sound like this.

This sounds like a, I don't know, somebody banging on something, hammering something, bang, bang, bang.

...