When I was a kid, I found solace from a house that was pretty stressful, where my dad was sick,

and my mom really didn't know how to handle it, by taking a backpack and going on walks

up the mountain behind our house.

And I did that every single day.

My job was as a kid to experience whatever mystery and magic and maybe, you know, very

realm just happened to be hovering right under the surface.

There was a cave on the hill behind my house.

There was this huge rumor that it had been the cave that had been used by counterfeiters

during the 20s, and they had produced all this counterfeit money, and then the feds

had figured out that they were there and gone and found them and rid of them out and

dynamized the cave, but that the printing press was still locked inside the cave.

So a huge part of my childhood was spent in some combination of sitting on rocks and

playing flutes and pretending that I was about to meet a hobbit and also searching into

these dark spaces all over that hill for evidence of the way that people had used the landscape.

That investigatory, mysterious, maybe there's some hidden story here, and maybe it's dark,

maybe it's going to pull me into closer connection with some tragedy that happened here.

That instinct is as old as anything in my bones.

It is the first instinct that I have.

You are listening to Love and Radio.

I'm Nick Venergolk.

Today's very special Halloween episode, The Story of the Box.

The audio adventure features Erin Kaffall, who shares her encounter with a most innocent

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