Episode 29: V.ideo H.orror S.tory

Narrator: Welcome to Ghost Wax, a Far and Tall Tales Production. The following story may contain graphic content. Listener discretion is advised. 

[Intro Music]

Episode 29: Video Horror Story

Recorder clicks on

Luca - coughing Oh god, when's the last time someone was in here?

Voncid - What does that poster say?

Pip - “Coming soon: Star Man, starring Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen.

Luca: Star Man.. that was carpenter’s like 9th film, came out 1984, December, so home video probably 1985?

Voncid - Well, there we have it. And your cinema knowledge is as impressive as ever.

Pip: snort Nerd.

Luca:  Yeah?  How many Dungeons and Dragons manuals do you have in your startled oh shit.

Voncid: What is it?  Are you all right?

Luca: Yeah, there’s just… There's a cardboard person here and it scared me.

Pip: Ha Arnold Schwarzenegger from The Terminator. You were right to be scared.

Luca: How is it that no one has been in here in all that time?  This isn’t that bad a neighborhood, someone would have wanted to redevelop this spot.

Voncid: That’s precisely one of the reasons I think we might find what I’m after here. The Cypher is like all The Glorious, dichotomous. It’s formed from human connection, hence all the media and internet, but it’s also made of human disconnection, isolation. Fame and loneliness.  A building full of movies and games, inexplicably abandoned for decades. could be just its touch.

Luca: Did all the stores look like this?

Voncid: More or less.  Built to show off these wonderful artworks on the VHS covers.  They really did have a special quality to them.

Pip: Oh wow… I’ve got a body here.  Two?

Luca: I’ve seen a lot of crazy shit this year but…

Voncid: But two human bodies stuffed into a popcorn machine and mummified by the high salt content…

Pip: Yeah, that’s gotta rank.  Excuse me while I go puke my fucking guts out.

Voncid: Let me see… they are stiff, but If I can move this arm I can get to their name tags… and Phillipa if you really are going to be ill please do it in a bin.

Pip:  Really?, Puke grosses you out? You are bending human jerky with your bare hands.

Luca: Actually, human bile interferes with the reclaiming sigil circle.

Pip: Gotcha. I’ll take my sick far away from the designated necromancy areas.

Luca: Should I go with her?

Voncid: Give her a moment, this is her first time out of the Ardent in weeks, if she’s feeling strong enough to be on her own, that’s good. Plus we have an unseen escort of half a dozen blades.

Luca: They are seriously using her as bait?

Voncid: Straining to get the name tag Yes, because they don’t understand how The Cypher works, but it’s just as well with the Vile Observer also after her.

Luca: Fuck, Pip can’t catch a break.

Voncid: People like her tend to be lightning rods for this sort of thing. Aha!

peeling sound

Voncid: There we are… and…

peeling sound

Voncid: There we are!

we hear him dusting off the name tags

Voncid: Sidney and… Nancy. 

Luca: Interesting…

Voncid: What is?

Luca: Oh oh, it’s probably nothing but, well, if this place was sealed in ‘84 or ‘85? Well, Nancy Thompson was the name of the final girl character in a nightmare on Elm street and Sydney is another famous final girl in a film basically about genre tropes like final girls but from way later… same director though. Uh, just a weird coincidence.

Voncid: We are hunting The Cypher. This entity is tied deeply to our stories, quirks and memetic lines. I don’t think there’s anything coincidental about it. I mean it’s calling itself Mr. Media, I wonder if its new form was born among all these lurid box covers.

Luca: Are you feeling any better?

Pip: Sigh I’m fine, though I will never eat popcorn again.

Voncid: Alright, Luca help me pry them out, we can prepare them there by Mr. Swarzeneggar.

Pip: Ugh, I spoke too soon. gags

Recorder clicks off

Recorder clicks on

Voncid: Return from across the river wide, bring us your tale that you may be avenged.

Sydney:  Woah. 

Nancy: Yeah, big woah.

Sydney: Oh shit, oh shit.

Nancy: Sydney, deep breaths.

Sydney: I can’t!  I can’t breathe, can you?

Voncid: Ladies if…

Nancy: Oh shit, no I can’t.

Sydney: Then how are we talking?

Nancy: I don’t know!

Sydney and Nancy: Ahhh oh my god oh shit oh shit oh shit. 

Voncid:  Ladies please! Get a hold of yourselves.

Sydney: What?

Nancy: Who is this scary Grandpa?

Sydney: I don’t know, he’s giving real character in a Stephen King book vibes.

Nancy: You are the one who needs to chill, Scary Grandpa.

Sydney; Yeah, we’ve been through the most freaky possible night, so, like, you chill Scary Grandpa.

Pip: Oh, I love them.

Nancy: Sydney are you ok? I lost you after the green thing…

Sydney: I don’t know, the last thing I remember is that big hairy, like, what the hell was that?

Pip: Hey!  You’re dead.

Sydney: What?

Nancy: Are you serious?

Pip: As a heart attack, which judging from your mangled mummified corpses isn’t even close to what killed you. Scary Grandpa here raised you from the dead, we have questions about what killed you, so sorry to be a buzzkill and lame the tubular or whatever, but get it together.

Voncid: Perfect Phillipa, you found a perfect way to handle that.

Luca: coughs trying not to laugh Ahem, Sydney, Nancy, we just want to find out what happened here.

Sydney: slowly calming down  Ok, yeah um…

Nancy: We umm, we stayed late to sort the shelves, there were a bunch of big releases coming out.

Sydney: Yeah, Nightmare on Elm Street was going up on shelves. We were making jokes because the main character is this chick named Nancy.

Nancy: Which is also my name.  

Sydney: Yeah, we were excited, that movie is killer.

Nancy: Oh, I see what you did there.

Sydney: Oh, didn’t even mean to.

Nancy: Ok, so Sydney and I were on late, we had already locked up.

Sydney: Nancy said she did.

Nancy: I did. I had locked up, but then we heard the dingle of the bell at the door and this guy came in.  Real slick looking guy.  This dude was in this shiny gray suit and he wore these big square shades even inside.

Sydney: I almost started singing Sunglasses at Night.

Luca: Oh shit, that was 1984 too wasn’t it?

Nancy: Yeah, some people must have thought it was fashion advice. This dude came in right up to the counter.  “We’re closed dude” I told him.

Mr. Media: Oh that’s all right.

Nancy: I’m like what?  We are closed, you can’t rent a movie guy.

Mr. Media: Oh no darling, I don’t want to take anything out, I was actually wondering if you would mind putting something on your shelf. It’s something I’ve been working on and I would just love people to see it.

Pip: Holy shit… that voice.

Luca: Yeah something else is coming through on the wax.

Pip: I can’t, I gotta…I'm sorry.

Sydney: When I came in and saw them talking it was, weird. We had these tv’s mounted up on the walls and we had a movie going, it was umm, Jaws I think actually… from where I was, his glasses were like catching the movies, reflecting it… and it was part where the shark is just biting and chowing down on that old sailor guy… In his eyes all I saw were teeth eating this guy while he was talking to Nancy. It was not cool. He gave off this real cocaine Wall Street vibe, but also this creepy predator thing.  I wanted him out of there. I kinda yelled at him. “Dude, did you not hear her?  We are closed.”

Mr. Media: But I would really like you to put my movie on your shelves. Is there anything you’d like?  I can give you something you’ll like in exchange.

Nancy: I like scoff at him. “Sure” I say, “Five hundred bucks and I’ll put your movie on our shelf”.

Mr. Media: Oh yes, that will be fine.

Luca: Cid, the… its voice is definitely coming through the wax.

Voncid: I had a feeling it might.

Sydney: So this weirdo actually shells out five hundred bucks. Which, like, I would love to just take his money, but our boss will definitely notice if we stash a bunch of copies of some crazy movie and creepy as he was, I didn’t want to like, steal from him. But he sets this briefcase down on the counter and pulls out a single VHS. Plain black, not even a title.  

Nancy: Yeah, he just shells out five hundo and then he’s gone, we laughed our asses off. It was so much money and it was like, for nothing.

Sydney: Guy was on drugs.

Nancy: Oh definitely. We split the money and popped it up on the shelf.  It’s just a black spine, no label, no one was going to think twice about it, definitely no one was going to try to rent it, so like, no problem right?  

Sydney: Yeah, no problem…

Nancy: Huh.

Sydney: Yeah, do you, do you think that’s what started it?

Nancy: Damn. I mean, what else?

Voncid: What do you think it started?

Sydney: The first one… we didn’t even realize what was happening, that anything was happening.

Nancy: I heard it first.  

We hear a soft whimpering, a woman crying

Nancy: Sydney was changing the movie.  They’d blown Jaws up and were swimming back. We went for Last House on the Left next, since it was a big Wes Craven night. When we were putting some stuff marked “to go” in the “for sale” bin when I heard like, crying?  I thought it was in the movie, because, you know that movie is fucked up, but it wasn’t… it was barely out of the credits. There was like… this whimpering coming from the bathroom. And I’m like, holy shit did someone stay in there after we closed up, like what’s going on? So I went in and the lights, the fluorescents were flickering like crazy. I call in “Hey who’s in there?” but like before I could finish it the crying just 

The crying stops

Nancy: Stops. The lights stopped flickering and it was suddenly really quiet… When this dumpster sneaks up behind me and grabs my shoulder.

Sydney: I did not!

Nancy: You did! You scared the shit out of me!  I jumped like ten feet.

Sydney: You were just standing in the doorway to the women’s restroom staring like a zombie.

Nancy: Well leave it to Sydney to provide the unnecessary early jump scare. I was about to start theorizing that we were getting pranked, or creeped on, the guy flashing money and the VHS, the crying, it was a lot of weird for a few “after hour” hours… but I didn’t get a chance.

Sydney: I saw him first. I heard the tell-tale sound of a video box falling, customers dropped the things all day everyday, but sometimes they fall on their own, not set right or whatever...  Nancy was poking around in the bathroom looking for the crying ghost, or whatever it was, so I went to get the tape and… there was a man… this huge man standing with his back to me in the middle of the aisle.  I thought of the creep with the shades, but this guy was… he was huge.  His back was this hunched hill of muscles, his arms were or well, one of them was as big around as me, the other was kinda like normal.  His normal hand… he was wearing these yellow gardening gloves, but they were all soaked through kinda brown? He was, he was just tipping movies off the shelves one after another, letting them fall to the floor.

I wanted to yell at him, tell him to get out, but I couldn’t say anything.  Just looking at him closed up my throat… even before I saw he was holding a big rusty pair of gardening shears.  This jagged rusty thing was dangling from his giant fingers, scraping on the floor as he walked.  He kinda sniffed the air, like he was smelling me? And then turned, slow, slow. I could feel my vision just zooming in on his face, except it wasn’t a face, it was a mask… it was white, but I don’t… it kinda moved?  It had a black mouth like a huge oval, but there were little white air holes in it too.  It looked like a bunch of different things jammed together.

I was so scared I don’t think I would have even thought to move if Nancy hadn’t screamed at me.  She just screamed DUCK so I did.

Nancy: I came around the corner and I saw Sydney frozen, this huge fucking mutant guy squaring up to swing a machete at her and it didn’t seem like she was going to move, so I shouted.

Sydney: Hey thanks.

Nancy: Of course! So this machete swings right over her head, splits like half the post-apocalyptics into pieces in one big swipe.

Sydney: I dropped onto my butt and it's… you thought it was a machete?  That's weird because he had a shears, but when he swung at me I could swear it wasn’t shears, it was a huge kitchen knife. Anyways I ducked it and it got, like, stuck in the wood of the VHS rack for a second and I kicked and scrambled like crazy. I am not sure if I even meant to but I like kicked his knee.

Nancy: Oh I heard it crack. 

Crack

Sydney: So he, like, goes down in a heap and I’m running and screaming, and he’s up, hopping after us and making these insane noises, howling and swearing.

Nancy: I pushed one of the racks over him, but it barely slowed him down.

Sydney: It gave us enough time to make it to the front door and realize someone had chained it up.

Nancy: So we ducked behind the checkout counter.

Sydney: And watched him through the returns slot.

Nancy: he huffed and growled and stormed around looking for us, but then… he saw the adults only section behind the beaded curtain and…

Sydney: He got distracted.  

Nancy: Yeah he went inside and… I don’t know what the hell to make of this, but he went inside and we could hear like a bunch of women screaming?

Sydney: It sounded like a bloodbath.

Nancy: Whatever was happening we weren’t sticking around to find out, we ran to the other end of the store, thought we could get out through the office but… holy shit, I forgot about this part.

Sydney: The shark!

Nancy: Yeah the fucking shark! Ok so right in the middle of a huge pile of VHS tapes fallen off all the shelves, laying there, like thirty feet of shiny gray skin and fins and teeth, was a shark.  A big. ass. great white shark. Its mouth was chewing the air, up and down and then it flicked its tail, sending another shelf toppling over.  I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. The shark looked as fucking confused as I was. All it could do was kinda, roll around?  It was slapping up and down all helpless, it looked like how we felt. We walked around it and went into the offices, but the second I opened the door something came flying up at my face. Child giggles It grabbed onto me, and was wrapping these long I don’t know like, soft tentacles around me?  Syd, what the hell was it?

Sydney: It was a doll. A clown doll?  But it had, like a baby's face.

Nancy: But it bit me right?

Sydney: Oh yeah.  It was biting you on the neck trying to drink your blood or something, it just kept going “baby thirsty, baby thirsty.”

Nancy: Yeah well I never got a look at it because Sydney and I grabbed onto it, ripped it loose and threw it behind us, right at the shark.

Sydney: Yeah.

Nancy: And well, whatever it was basically went right in the shark’s mouth and then there was this horrible screaming it was like “AHHAHAHAHAH” Comical screaming

Sydney: It was more like “GGGUUUAAAHHH!” comical screaming

Nancy: Yeah no I think I’d remember cause “aAHHHAHAH!”

Overlapping

Sydney: Dude, it was “GUGUUUAHAHAHA” different screaming

Voncid: Ladies for the love of the glass gods please, please stop. Clears throat So, you tried to escape out the back?

Nancy: Yeah, but we couldn’t.

Sydney: Because it was totally frozen.

Voncid: I’m sorry?

Sydney: It was frozen over, frozen shut. There was snow up to your waist.

Voncid: Luca, would you check the back office?

Luca: Woah… it’s, it’s still freezing back here.  Like, really cold, there’s no snow, but it’s freezing.

Sydney: We couldn’t get that back door open, sealed shut.

Voncid: Luca your breath… could you exhale please?

Luca: Exhales

Voncid: Bizarre… there is no exhaled breath condensate.

Nancy: Whaa?

Voncid: Fog, uh the white mist that emerges when you exhale in the cold. Does it feel like it should be there?

Luca: Definitely.

Voncid: Hmm. Anomalous.

Nancy: OK focus up.  

Sydney: Yeah, keep it on us.  

Voncid: Please, continue.

Nancy: Ok, so… uh… What happened next?

Sydney: We hid.

Nancy: Right.

Sydney: This slinky black shiny thing came down out of the ceiling, drooling and stalking around, everywhere it drooled the ground hissed and the carpet curled up and burned.

Nancy: And then a whole bunch of glowing things in vague people shapes ripped out of the wall and went screeching across the place…

Sydney: It was chaos, there was a guy in a Santa Suit with an ax. 

Nancy: On I love that one…punish

Sydney: But the shiny black monster grabbed him and pulled him up into the ceiling, there were tiny little nobby critters running around wrecking up the place and laughing…

Luca: Gremlins… ‘84 was amazing…

Sydney: And then the wall shook and something roared… it roared and the whole building shook, I feel like I knew the sound but it was so loud all we could do was just push our hands over our ears.

Nancy: And then it got quiet. After that roar, it was like the other monsters were scared to come out?

Sydney: Yeah whatever that was, maybe it scared all the other monsters. But, minutes went by, it was still quiet and we snuck out.

Nancy: The shark wasn’t moving.

Sydney: Yeah except for the dead shark and the fact that the place was trashed, there was nothing.  We started to head over to the doors, maybe we thought we could get them open and… oh no.

Nancy: Yeah, that’s it.  That’s when they got us I remember now!

Sydney: Yeah...

Luca: What got you?

Nancy: Shit after all that I’m kind of embarrassed to admit it.

Sydney: Ugh, at least the one that got you was native to the land, mine was not even in its natural element.

Nancy: OK Fair.

Voncid: What was it?

Nancy: I got strangled by the Wolf Man… not a cool werewolf looking one from, like, you know from the Howling or Werewolf in London…no it was like the old dog faced boy one?  He didn’t even bite me, he just like… choked me?

Sydney: Yeah. I, got got by the creature from the black lagoon.

Nancy: Oof.

Sydney: He choked me, too… man what a lame kill.

Pip: You’ll be happy to know that they stuffed your mangled bodies into the popcorn machine afterwards. It was grizzly.

Nancy: Well, hey, that’s not half bad.

Sydney: Ok, that’s pretty gnarly.

Nancy: Gnarly kill after all.

Voncid: They are gone.

Pip: Here. It’s the tape Mr. Media left for them to display.

Voncid: How do you know?

Pip: Because the box isn’t blank anymore.

Voncid: Ah. Their likenesses, screaming, or perhaps laughing?  Surrounded by all manner of classic horror characters.

Pip: What’s on there do you think?

Voncid: I am not sure. Did you see this on the back?

Pip: No… oh… woah.

Voncid: Synopsis, A chilling tale of two young women trapped in a video store as the figments of their fears and fixations come to life all around them. Clears throat Years later, a Scary Grandpa, a young man whose soul is carved full of holes and a star in the making discover it and wonder if they ought to watch it. They certainly should.

Pip: Fuck.

Voncid: Yes, for a moment I thought this tape might be exactly what we were looking for… a piece of the Cypher, an anchor or form we could use… but now I think perhaps this avenue may be a trap.

Pip: Oh shit, you think?

Voncid: Luca, come back, we have what we were after. Time to go.  

Luca: Yeah, sorry, I was just thinking about this cold spot. Oh that uh, maybe no nevermind.

Voncid: No go ahead.

Luca: Well, all of this is pulled from movies yeah?  

Voncid: It appears.

Luca: The breath thing.

Voncid: Yes the lack of exhaled condensate in the cold room.

Luca: Well uh, famously, I mean well maybe the most famous horror, definitely up there, is The Shining. And uh, at the end they are running around outside in these supposedly super freezing temperatures. I mean the possessed dad even freezes to death.

Voncid: Yes.

Luca: Well, the film maker was this incredible perfectionist, like almost pathological but he flubbed there. They shot it on a set, and all the snow was fake right?  It wasn’t really cold.  So, they’re running around in these freezing winter wastelands and…

Voncid: No fog in their breath.

Luca: Yeah, their breath wasn’t visible.

Voncid: Well… it really is the little details.  

Pip: Hey uh, scary grandpa? I found a big pile of shark teeth over here, can I keep them?

Recorder clicks off

Narrator: Thank you for listening to Ghost Wax, a production of Far and Tall Tales. Find us at farandtalltales.squarespace.com. Ghost Wax is an independent podcast so if you liked this show, please rate and review, and consider joining us on Patreon at Patreon.com/farandtalltales

Also give a listen to our fantasy role play show Could've Been Heroes for something completely different. 

Ghost Wax is written and directed by Robert Knutson 

Production and editing by Aaron Schoenrock

Our theme song is by Beau Hoover. 

This episode features 

Robert Knutson as Voncid

Aaron Schoenrock as Luca and Mr. Media

Stephanie Olson as Phillippa

Kate Swindler as Sydney 

Nikki Solomon as Nancy

Special thanks to Kate and Nikki from Just Ghoul With It podcast for collaborating with us on this week's episode. If you enjoyed their work here, please go check out Just Ghoul With It podcasts, wherever podcasts are found.