October 28, 2010 • 30 mins
In this spooky episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuck get you ready for Halloween as they narrate H.P. Lovecraft's creepy tale "The Tomb." Tune in to learn more...if you dare!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented twenty twelve Camra. It's ready.
Are you welcome to stuff you should know from HowStuffWorks
dot com?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Heyden, Welcome to the podcast. A very special podcast, right, Chuck,
A spectacular if you will. Happy Halloween to all of
you out there. This should come out a couple of
days before it before, but we wanted to make sure
that we weren't going to miss it, and so we're
releasing a special Halloween podcast that's right for this year.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Little something new.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, and what we're doing is not in any way,
shape or form scientific. It is, in fact pure fiction
or is it it is? Okay, we're going to read
just to make sure we scare you guys, good and proper.
This Halloween and HP Lovecraft short story that was published
(01:08):
in nineteen twenty two, and it's entitled The Tomb, Right.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Did you like this?
Speaker 4 (01:13):
It was? It was good.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I think it's a great short story. It's one of
my faves.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Awesome.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Okay, I should probably preface this with Chuck is uncertain
about how this is gonna go. So if it goes good,
that means you're hearing it. If not, it'll be locked
away forever in a vault of some sort, possibly a tomb.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Right, tomb?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, so, Chuck, are you ready? I am, I'm spooky,
I'm loose, I'm a little nervous, am I said?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Oh, yeah, right, all right.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
I'm gonna start. Okay, okay, all right, ready, I'm ready
the tomb by HP Lovecraft, in relating the circumstances which
have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented,
I am aware that my present position will create a
natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative. It is
an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too
(02:01):
limited in its mental vision to weigh with patience and
intelligence those isolated phenomena seen and felt only by a
psychologically sensitive few, which lie outside its common experience. Men
of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction
betwixt the real and the unreal, that all things reappear
as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual
(02:22):
physical and mental media through which we are made conscious
of them. But the prosaic materialism of the majority condemns
his madness. The flashes of supersight which penetrate the common
veil of obvious empiricism, so I should probably say right here, Chuck,
that it.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Gets a lot better. Okay, Okay.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
My name is Jervis Dudley, and from earliest childhood I
have been a dreamer and a visionary, wealthy beyond the
necessity of a commercial life, and temperamentally unfitted for the
formal studies and social recreations of my acquaintances. I have
dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world, spending
my youth and adolescence in ancient and life little known books,
(03:01):
and in roaming the fields and groves of the region
near my ancestral home. I do not think that what
I read in these books or saw in these fields
and groves was exactly what other boys read and saw there.
But of this I must say little, since detailed speech
would but confirm those cruel slanders upon my intellect, which
I sometimes overhear from the whispers of the stealthy attendants
(03:21):
around me. It is sufficient for me to relate events
without analyzing causes. I have said that I dwelt apart
from the visible world, but I have not said that
I dwelt alone. This no human creature may do for
lacking the fellowship of the living, he inevitably draws upon
the companionship of the things that are not or are
no longer living. Close by my home there lies a
(03:42):
singular wooded hollow, in.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Whose twilight deeps.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
I spent most of my time, reading, thinking, and dreaming.
Down its moss covered slopes, my first steps of infancy
were taken, and around its grotesquely gnarled oaks, my first
fancies of boyhood were woven. Did I come to know
the presiding dry heads of those trees? And often have
I watched their wild dances in the struggling beams of
(04:06):
waning moon. But of these things I must not now speak.
I will tell only of the lone tomb in the
darkest of the hillside thickets, the deserted tomb of the Hides,
an old and exalted family whose last direct ascendant had
been laid within the black recesses many decades before my birth.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Take it, chuck, So there's a family called the Hides. Yeah,
and there's a tomb.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Okay, that's where the Hides are, gotcha?
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Okay?
Speaker 4 (04:35):
The vault to which I refers in ancient granite, weathered
and discolored by the mists and dampness of generations excavated
back into the hillside. The structure is visible only at
the entrance. The door, a ponderous and forbidding slab of stone,
hangs upon rusted iron hinges, and is fastened a jar
in a queerly sinister way by means of heavy iron
(04:55):
chains and padlocks. According to a gruesome fashion of a
half a century ago, the abode of the race whose
scions are inurned had once crowned the declivity which holds
the tomb, but had long since fallen victims to the
flames which sprang up from a disastrous stroke of lightning
(05:16):
of the midnight storm which destroyed this gloomy mansion. The
older inhabitants of the region sometimes speak and hushed and
uneasy voices alluding to what they call divine wrath, in
a manner that, in later years vaguely increased the always
strong fascination which I felt for the forest darkened sepulcher.
(05:37):
One man only had perished in the fire when the
last of the hides was buried. In this place of
shade and stillness. The sad urnful of ashes had come
from a distant land to which the family had repaired.
When the mansion burned down. No one remains to lay
flowers before the granite portal, and few care to brave
the depressing shadows which seem to linger strangely about the
(05:58):
water worn stone. I shall never forget the afternoon when
I first stumbled upon the half hidden House of the Dead.
It was in midsummer, when the alchemy of nature transmutes
the Sylvan landscape to one vivid and almost homogeneous mass
of green. When the senses are well nigh intoxicated with
the surging seas of moist verdure and the subtly indefinable
(06:22):
odors of the soil and the vegetation in such surroundings,
the mind loses its perspective. Time and space become trivial
and unreal, and echoes of a forgotten, prehistoric pass beat
insistently upon the enthralled consciousness. All day I had been
wandering through the mystic groves of the Hollow, thinking thoughts
I need not discuss, and conversing with things I need
(06:44):
not name. In years a child of ten, I had
seen and heard many wonders unknown to the throng, and
was oddly aged in certain respects. When, upon forcing my
way between two savage clumps of briars, I suddenly encountered
the entrance of the vault. I had no knowledge of
what I had discovered. The dark blocks of granite, the
door so curiously ajar, and the funeral carvings above the
(07:07):
arch aroused in me. No associations of mournful or terrible
character of graves and tombs. I knew and imagined much,
but had, on account of my peculiar temperament, been kept
from all personal contact with churchyards and cemeteries. The strange
stone house on the Woodland slope was to me only
a source of interest and speculation, and its cold, damp
(07:30):
interior into which I vainly peered through the aperture so
tantalizingly left, contained for me no hint of death or decay.
But in that instant of curiosity was borne the madly
unreasoning desire which has brought me to this hell of confinement.
Spurred on by a voice which must have come from
the hideous soul of the forest, I resolved to enter
(07:51):
the beckoning gloom in spite of the ponderous change which
barred my passage in the waning light of day, I
alternately rattled the rusty impediments with a view to throwing
wide the stone door, an essay to squeeze my slight
form through the space already provided. But neither plan met
with success. At first curious, I was not frantic, and
(08:11):
when in the thickening twilight I returned to my home,
I had sworn to the hundred gods of the grove
that at any cost I would someday force an entrance
to the black, chilly depths that seemed calling out to me.
The physician with the iron gray beard who comes each
day to my room once told a visitor that this
decision marked the beginnings of a pitiful monomania. But I
(08:35):
will leave final judgment to my readers when they shall
have learnt all.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
So, basically where we're at right, Chuck, is that we
have a little weirdo kid who discovered a family tomb
that's been abandoned, yes in a grove. Tried to get in,
and he realized that he can't because he's too puny.
Yet he's drawn to it so much like his ex caliber.
Getting into this tomb is like something he's sworn to do.
Eventually sounds like it, but we find that he is
(09:02):
in an asylum.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
Well, little Jervis Dudley, Little.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Jervis Dudley, I'm going to take over now. Okay, okay.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
The months following my discovery were spent in feudal attempts
to force the complicated padlock of the slightly open vault,
and in carefully guarded inquiries regarding the nature and history
of the structure. With the traditionally receptive ears of the
small boy, I learned much, though an habitual secretiveness caused
me to tell no one of my information or my resolve.
(09:31):
It is perhaps worth mentioning that I was not at
all surprised or terrified on learning the nature of the vault.
My rather original ideas regarding life and death had caused
me to associate the cold clay with the breathing body
in a vague fashion, and I felt that the sinister
family of the burned down mansion was in some way
represented within the stone space I sought to explore. Mumbled
(09:52):
tales of the weird rights and godless revels of bygone
years in the ancient hall gave to me a new
and potent interest in the tomb, before whose doors I
would sit for long hours at a time each day.
Once I thrust a candle within the nearly closed entrance,
but could see nothing save a flight of damp stone
steps leading downward. The odor of the place repelled yet
(10:14):
bewitched me. I felt I had known it before, in
a past remote beyond all recollection, beyond even my tendency
of the body I now possess. The year after I
first beheld the tomb, I stumbled upon a worm eaten
translation of Plutarch's lives in the book filled attic of
my home. Reading the Life of Theseus, I was much
impressed by that passage telling of the great stone beneath
(10:37):
which the boyish hero was to find his tokens of
destiny whenever he should become old enough to lift its
enormous weight. This legend had the effect of dispelling my
keenest impatience to enter the vault, for it made me
feel that the time was not yet ripe. Later, I
told myself I should grow to a strength and ingenuity
which might enable me to unfasten the heavily chained door
(10:58):
with ease. But until till then, I would do better
by conforming to what seemed the will of fate. Accordingly,
my watches by the dank portal became less persistent, and
much of my time was spent in other, though equally
strange pursuits. I would sometimes rise very quietly in the night,
stealing out to walk in those churchyards and places of
(11:18):
burial from which I had been kept by my parents.
What I did there I may not say, for I
am not now sure of the reality of certain things.
But I know that on the day after such a
nocturnal ramble I would often astonish those about me with
my knowledge of topics almost forgotten.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
For many generations.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
It was after a night like this that I shocked
the community with a queer conceit about the burial of
the rich and celebrated Squire Brewster, a maker of local
history who was interred in seventeen eleven, and whose slate
headstone bearing a graven skull and crossbones, was slowly crumbling
to powder. In a moment of childish imagination, I vowed
not only that the undertaker, Goodman Simpson, had stolen the
(11:59):
silver buckled shoes, silken hose, and satin small clothes of
the deceased before burial, but that the Squire himself not
fully inanimate, had turned twice in his mound covered coffin
on the day of internment, So what's going on here?
So basically, the kid is resolved, like theseus, that his
(12:22):
destiny still awaits him. He's not ready for it yet,
so instead he's kind of going around, hanging around churchyard's
burial places, and he's coming back the next day with
weird knowledge, Chuck like knowledge. No living human should.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
Have knowledge that Jervis Dudley surely should not have.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Right, Chuck, have you taken over again?
Speaker 4 (12:43):
I'd like to, Okay, okay, but the idea of entering
the tomb never left my thoughts. Josh being indeed simulated
by the unexpected genealogical discover that my own maternal ancestry
possessed at least a slight link with a supposedly extra
family of the hides. Last of my paternal race, I was,
likewise the last of this older and more mysterious line.
(13:06):
I began to feel that the tomb was mine, and
to look forward with hot eagerness to the time when
I might pass within the stone door and down those
slimy stone steps into the dark. I now formed the
habit of listening very intently at the slightly open portal,
choosing my favorite hours of midnight stillness for the odd vigil.
(13:29):
By the time I came of age, I had made
a small clearing in the thicket before the mold stained
facade of the hillside, allowing the surrounding vegetation to encircle
and overhang the space like the walls and roof of
Sylvan Bower. This bower was my temple Josh, the fastened
door my shrine, and here I would lie outstretched on
(13:51):
the mossy ground, thinking strange thoughts and dreaming of strange dreams.
The night of the First Revelation was a sultry one.
I must have fallen asleep from fatigue, for it was
with a distinct sense of awakening that I heard the
voices of those tones and accents. I hesitate to speak
of their quality. I will not speak, but I may
(14:12):
say that they presented certain uncanny differences in vocabulary, pronunciation,
of mode, and utterance. Every shade of the New England dialect,
from the uncouth syllables of the Puritan colonists to the
precise rhetoric of fifty years ago, seemed represented in that
shadowy colloquy, though it was only later that I noticed
the fact. At the time, indeed, my attention was distracted
(14:34):
from this matter by another phenomenon, a phenomenon so fleeting
that I could not take oath upon its reality. I
barely fancied that as I awoke, a light had been
hurriedly extinguished within the sunken sepulcher. I do not think
I was either astounded or panic stricken, but I know
that I was greatly and permanently changed. That night, upon
(14:56):
returning home, I went with much directness to a rotting
chest in the attic, wherein I found the key, which
next day unlocked with ease the barrier I had so
long stormed in vain. The dude has a key in
his attic to this tomb, and he went directly to it.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
After this big nut.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Is his heat up. It was in the soft glow
of the late afternoon that I first entered the vault
on the abandoned slope. A spell was upon me, and
my heart leaped with an exultation I can but ill describe.
As I closed the door behind me and descended the
dripping steps by the light of my lone candle, I
seemed to know the way, and though the candle sputtered
(15:35):
with the stifling reek of the place, I felt singularly
at home in the musty charnel house air. Looking about me,
I beheld many marble slabs bearing coffins, or the remains
of coffins. Some of these were sealed and intact, but
others had nearly vanished, leaving the silver handles and plates
isolated amidst certain curious heaps of whitish dust. Upon one
(15:57):
plate I read the name Sir Jeffrey Hyde, who had
come from Sussex in sixteen forty and died here a
few years later. And a conspicuous alcove was one fairly
well preserved and untenanted casket, adorned with a single name,
which brought to me both a smile and a shudder.
An odd impulse caused me to climb upon the broad slab,
(16:17):
extinguish my candle, and lie down within the vacant box.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
So this guy is totally off his night at this point,
he's lying down in a coffin in the tune.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
In the gray light of dawn, I staggered from the
vault and locked the chain of the door behind me.
I was no longer a young man, though, but twenty
one winters had chilled my bodily frame. Early rising villagers
who observed my homeward progress looked at me strangely and
marveled at the signs of ribald revelry, which they saw
in one whose life was known to be a sober
(16:54):
and solitary one. I did not appear before my parents
till after a long and refreshing sleap.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
You're good at this, Chuck, Thanks, you're good.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
So you get what's going on here? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (17:08):
I think audible dot Com was gonna be calling us
any minute.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Now and say please stop.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
Yeah, we'll sue you, all right, Chuck, you ready? So
what's going on? Is this kid is lying down in
this tomb. He leaves the tomb. Is he older now?
Speaker 3 (17:21):
He's twenty one? Now?
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Remember he first found the tomb at age ten ten,
couldn't open it, resolved to figure out, you know, basically
just turned into a weirdo in other ways. And then finally,
when he's twenty one, he sees a light in this place. Yeah,
one night is changed. When he wakes up, he goes
directly to his own attic, his own attic finds the key,
(17:43):
finds the key.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
Gets in, lays down in the coffin, pretty new coffin.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Wakes up the next day, stumbles back home in the
morning and it looks like he'd been partying all night.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Yeah, and people are looking at him like he's weird,
which I can't figure out. This all seems very normal
to me.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
All right, you ready, May I please do? Henceforward? I
haunted the tomb each night, seeing, hearing, and doing things
I must never reveal. My speech, always susceptible to environmental influences,
was the first thing to succumb to the change. He
must have a thick tongue too, and my suddenly acquired
archaism of diction was soon remarked upon. Later, a queer
(18:22):
boldness and recklessness came into my demeanor, till I unconsciously
grew to possess the bearing of a man of the world.
Despite my lifelong seclusion. My former silent tongue waxed voluble
with the easy grace of a Chesterfield, with a godless
cynicism of a Rochester. I know you get that, Chuck.
I displayed a peculiar erudition, utterly unlike the fantastic Monkish
(18:45):
lore over which I had poured in my youth, and
covered the fly leaves of my books with facile, impromptu
epigrams which brought up suggestions of gay prior and the
sprightliest of Augustine wits and rhymsters. One morning at breakfast,
I came close to de z by declaiming impalpably licorice accents,
an effusion of eighteenth century Bacchanalian mirth, a bit of
(19:07):
Georgian playfulness never recorded in a book. So basically what
he's saying is he sounds like he's drunk in the mornings,
even though he's like a very sober, solitary, kind of
a reclusive kid, but he's starting to kind of change
into a party boy.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Now here, there's a few passages that we're not going
to read. We're gonna skip over these.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
Okay, yeah, the poetry.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
We're actually editing Lovecraft right now. Yeah, about this time
I conceived my present fear of fire and thunderstorms. Previously
indifferent to such things, I had now an unspeakable horror
of them, and would retire to the innermost recesses of
the house whenever the heavens threaten an electrical display. Yes,
a favorite haun of mine during the day was the
(19:54):
ruined cellar of the mansion that had burned down. Remember that,
Oh yeah, that's above the tomb, and in fancy I
would picture the structure as it had been in its prime.
On one occasion, I startled a villager by leading him
confidently to a shallow sub seller, of whose existence I
seemed to know, in spite of the fact that it
had been unseen and forgotten for many generations. At last
(20:19):
came that which I had long feared. My parents, alarmed
at the altered manner and appearance of their only son,
commenced to exert over my movements, a kindly espionage which
threatened to result in disaster. I had told no one
of my visits to the tomb, having guarded my secret
purpose with religious zeals since childhood. But now I was
forced to exercise care in threading the mazes of the
(20:40):
wooded hollow, that I might throw off a possible pursuer.
My key to the vault I kept suspended from a
cord about my neck, its presence known only to me.
I never carried out of the sepulcher any of the
things I came upon whilst within its walls. I like
that word, sepulcher. You've got twice, that was my first one.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
So what's going on here?
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Kids?
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Fraid of lightning and thunder?
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Remember that house? Yeah, this cellar of which he's visiting
was struck by lightning and burned out and one person
perished in it. And this is in the eighteenth century.
I think, yeah, long before this kid's running around, because
this was supposed to be contemporary in like the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
Right, okay, okay, Cherry's in there laughing. You ready my turn?
Speaker 3 (21:23):
I'm ready, Bud.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
One morning, as I emerged from the damp tomb and
fastened the chain of the portal with no too steady hand,
I beheld an adjacent thicket the dreaded face of a watcher.
See that's creepy.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Damn.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
Surely the end was near, for my bower was discovered
and the objective of my nocturnal journey is revealed. The
man did not accost me, so I hastened home in
an effort to overhear what he might report to my
care worn father. Were my sojourns beyond the chain door
about to be proclaimed to the world imagine my delighted
astonishment on hearing the spy inform my parents in cautious
(21:58):
whisper that I had spent the night in the bower
outside the tomb. My sleep filmed eyes fixed upon the
crevice where the padlocked portal stood. Ajar By what miracle
had the watcher thus deluded? I was now convinced that
a supernatural agency protected me. Made bold by this heaven
since circumstance, I began to resume perfect openness in going
(22:21):
to the vault, confident that no one would witness my entrance.
For a week, I tasted to the full the joys
of that charnal conviviality, which I must not describe. When
the thing happened and I was borne away to this
accursed abode of sorrow and monotony.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
So did you get what just happened? Uh?
Speaker 4 (22:43):
Yeah? He basically the guy said, this kid hasn't been going.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
In there, he's just been sleeping outside of it.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Yeah, but he feels like he's going in there. Sure
he's losing it or has he lost it? Or is he?
Or will he.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Find out? Right now?
Speaker 4 (23:01):
I should not have ventured out that night, for the
taint of thunder was in the clouds, and hellish phosphorescence
rose from the rank swamp at the bottom of the hollow.
The call of the dead, too was different. Instead of
the hillside tomb, it was the charred cellar on the
crest of the slope, whose presiding damon beckoned me with
unseen fingers. As I emerged from the intervening grove upon
(23:24):
the plain before the ruin, I beheld, in the misty moonlight,
a thing I had always vaguely expected. The mansion, gone
for a century, once more reared its stately height to
the raptured vision, every window ablaze with a splendor of
many candles. Up the long drive rolled the beaches of
the Boston gentry, whilst on foot came a numerous assemblage
(23:45):
of powdered exquisites from the neighboring mansions. With this throng
I mingled, though I knew I belong with the hosts
rather than the guests. Inside the hall were music, laughter,
and wine on every hand. Several faces I reckoned eyes,
though I should have known them better, had they been
shriveled or eaten away by death and decomposition. Amidst a
(24:06):
wild and reckless throng. I was the wildest and most abandoned.
Gay blasphemy poured in torrents from my lips and in
my shocking sallies. I heeded no law of God, man
or nature. Suddenly a peal of thunder resonant even above
the din of the Swinish revelry clave the very roof,
and laid a hush fear upon the boisterous company. Red
(24:29):
tongues of flame and searing gust of heat and gulf
the house, and the roisterers struck with terror. The descent
of a calamity, which seemed to transcend the bounds of
un guided nature, fled shrieking into the night. I alone
remained josh riveted to my seat by a groveling fear
which I had never felt before. And then a second
horror took possession of my soul. Burnt alive, the ashes
(24:50):
my body dispersed by the four winds. I might never
lie in the tomb of the hides. Was not my
coffin prepared for me? Had I not a right arrest
till eternity amongst the descendants of Sir Jeoffrey Hyde, I
I would claim my heritage of death, even though my
soul would go seeking through the ages for another corporeal
(25:11):
tenement to represent it on that vacant slab and the
alcove of the vault. Jervis Hide should never share the
sad fate of Palarinus.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Nice.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
He's Scottish. All of a sudden, yeah or whatever that was?
Speaker 3 (25:25):
You ready?
Speaker 4 (25:25):
Well, what's going on here? Is he clearly saw the
mansion and yeah, I mean it was rebuilt. There were guests,
ghostly guest and he went and partied as a host.
He felt like as a hide, Yeah, as a hide.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
And then what lightning came and took care of business
all over again.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah, he was at the party on the night that
it went down, that whole sad, ghastly business went down.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
Is he mad?
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Oh, let's find out all right? You ready? Yeah? May
I take it home?
Speaker 4 (25:53):
Yeah? The exciting conclusion of the tomb.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
As the phantom of the Burning House faded, I found
myself screaming and struggling madly in the arms of two men,
one of whom was the spy who had followed me
to the tomb. Rain was pouring down in Torrents, and
upon the southern horizon were flashes of the lightning that
had so lately passed over our heads. My father, his
face lined with sorrow, stood by as I shouted my
(26:16):
demands to be laid within the tomb, frequently admonishing my
captors to treat me as gently as they could. A
blackened circle on the floor of the ruined cellar told
of a violent stroke from the heavens, and from this
spot a group of curious villagers with lanterns were prying
a small box of antique workmanship, which the thunderbolt had
brought to light, ceasing my futile and now objectless writhing.
(26:39):
I watched the spectators as they viewed the treasure trove,
and was permitted to share in their discoveries. The box,
whose fastenings were broken by the stroke which unearthed it
contained many papers and objects of value, but I had
eyes for one thing alone. It was the porcelain miniature
of a young man in a smartly curled bag wig
and bore the initials J H. The face was such
(27:01):
that as I gazed, I might as well have been
studying my mirror.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
You got the a's messed up.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
On the following day, I was brought to this room
with the barred windows but I have been kept informed
of certain things through an aged and simple minded servitor,
for whom I bore a fondness in infancy, and who,
like me, loves the churchyard. What I have dared relate
of my experiences within the vault has brought me only
pitying smiles. My father, who visits me frequently, declares that
(27:30):
at no time did I pass the chained portal, and
swears that the rusted padlock had not been touched for
fifty years.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
When he examined it.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
He even says that all the village knew of my
journeys to the tomb, and that I was often watched
as I slept in the bower outside the grim facade,
my half open eyes fixed on the crevice that leads
to the interior. Against these insertions, I have no tangible
proof to offer, since my key to the padlock was
lost in the struggle on that night of horrors. The
strange things of the past which I learned during the
(28:00):
nocturnal meetings with the dead, he dismisses as the fruits
of my lifelong and omnivorous browsing amongst the ancient volumes
of the family library. Had it not been for my
old servant, Hiram. I should have by this time become
quite convinced of my madness. But Hiram, loyal to the last,
has held faith in me and has done that which
(28:20):
impels me to make public at least part of my story.
A week ago he burst open the lock which changed
the door of the tomb perpetually Ajar, and descended with
a lantern into the murky depths. On a slab in
an alcove, he found an old but empty coffin, whose
tarnished plate bears the single word jervis. In that coffin
(28:41):
and in that vault, they have promised me I shall
be buried.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
The end and scene.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Wow, the tomb HP Lovecraft.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
Pretty good, huh, i'd very creepy. Yeah, absolutely different time
back then, well much creepier obviously.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Yeah, I think this might have been in Amazing Stories
at first.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
You're Weird Stories, one of the two.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
In the TV show Amazing Stories.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
No, No, the old pulp comic book. Oh okay, yeah,
so hopefully that creeped.
Speaker 4 (29:15):
Everybody out right, Chuck, I'm creeped out.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
I'm creeped out too. What are you going to be
for Halloween?
Speaker 4 (29:20):
I don't know. The band is playing a gig and
we're all gonna dress alike, so something I'm lobbing for
something with mustaches, okay? Or maybe the taint of the thundercloud?
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Yes, which took?
Speaker 4 (29:34):
What are you going to be?
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Eight times? Eight takes for.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
Me to read that? Or are you laughing or Jerry laughing?
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Yeah? It was something messed that up.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
We should release the outtakes of the begin so U
I guess that's it. I got nothing.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Happy Halloween to everybody, Thank you care very much. Yeah, yes,
be safe out there. Remember if you're wearing an all
black costume, don't be stupid. Put some sort of reflective
material on it. Be careful of kids if you're driving,
Be careful of cars if you're a kid. And have
a happy, happy Halloween. And ta linus sitting in the
great Pumpkin Patch. There's always next to your pal.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
housetuffworks dot com.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
Want more house stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Works, check out our blogs on the house stuff works
dot com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented
twenty twelve Camri. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented twenty twelve Camra. It's ready.
Are you welcome to stuff you should know from HowStuffWorks
dot com?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Heyden, Welcome to the podcast. A very special podcast, right, Chuck,
A spectacular if you will. Happy Halloween to all of
you out there. This should come out a couple of
days before it before, but we wanted to make sure
that we weren't going to miss it, and so we're
releasing a special Halloween podcast that's right for this year.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Little something new.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, and what we're doing is not in any way,
shape or form scientific. It is, in fact pure fiction
or is it it is? Okay, we're going to read
just to make sure we scare you guys, good and proper.
This Halloween and HP Lovecraft short story that was published
(01:08):
in nineteen twenty two, and it's entitled The Tomb, Right.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Did you like this?
Speaker 4 (01:13):
It was? It was good.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I think it's a great short story. It's one of
my faves.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Awesome.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Okay, I should probably preface this with Chuck is uncertain
about how this is gonna go. So if it goes good,
that means you're hearing it. If not, it'll be locked
away forever in a vault of some sort, possibly a tomb.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Right, tomb?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, so, Chuck, are you ready? I am, I'm spooky,
I'm loose, I'm a little nervous, am I said?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Oh, yeah, right, all right.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
I'm gonna start. Okay, okay, all right, ready, I'm ready
the tomb by HP Lovecraft, in relating the circumstances which
have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented,
I am aware that my present position will create a
natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative. It is
an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too
(02:01):
limited in its mental vision to weigh with patience and
intelligence those isolated phenomena seen and felt only by a
psychologically sensitive few, which lie outside its common experience. Men
of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction
betwixt the real and the unreal, that all things reappear
as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual
(02:22):
physical and mental media through which we are made conscious
of them. But the prosaic materialism of the majority condemns
his madness. The flashes of supersight which penetrate the common
veil of obvious empiricism, so I should probably say right here, Chuck,
that it.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Gets a lot better. Okay, Okay.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
My name is Jervis Dudley, and from earliest childhood I
have been a dreamer and a visionary, wealthy beyond the
necessity of a commercial life, and temperamentally unfitted for the
formal studies and social recreations of my acquaintances. I have
dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world, spending
my youth and adolescence in ancient and life little known books,
(03:01):
and in roaming the fields and groves of the region
near my ancestral home. I do not think that what
I read in these books or saw in these fields
and groves was exactly what other boys read and saw there.
But of this I must say little, since detailed speech
would but confirm those cruel slanders upon my intellect, which
I sometimes overhear from the whispers of the stealthy attendants
(03:21):
around me. It is sufficient for me to relate events
without analyzing causes. I have said that I dwelt apart
from the visible world, but I have not said that
I dwelt alone. This no human creature may do for
lacking the fellowship of the living, he inevitably draws upon
the companionship of the things that are not or are
no longer living. Close by my home there lies a
(03:42):
singular wooded hollow, in.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Whose twilight deeps.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
I spent most of my time, reading, thinking, and dreaming.
Down its moss covered slopes, my first steps of infancy
were taken, and around its grotesquely gnarled oaks, my first
fancies of boyhood were woven. Did I come to know
the presiding dry heads of those trees? And often have
I watched their wild dances in the struggling beams of
(04:06):
waning moon. But of these things I must not now speak.
I will tell only of the lone tomb in the
darkest of the hillside thickets, the deserted tomb of the Hides,
an old and exalted family whose last direct ascendant had
been laid within the black recesses many decades before my birth.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Take it, chuck, So there's a family called the Hides. Yeah,
and there's a tomb.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Okay, that's where the Hides are, gotcha?
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Okay?
Speaker 4 (04:35):
The vault to which I refers in ancient granite, weathered
and discolored by the mists and dampness of generations excavated
back into the hillside. The structure is visible only at
the entrance. The door, a ponderous and forbidding slab of stone,
hangs upon rusted iron hinges, and is fastened a jar
in a queerly sinister way by means of heavy iron
(04:55):
chains and padlocks. According to a gruesome fashion of a
half a century ago, the abode of the race whose
scions are inurned had once crowned the declivity which holds
the tomb, but had long since fallen victims to the
flames which sprang up from a disastrous stroke of lightning
(05:16):
of the midnight storm which destroyed this gloomy mansion. The
older inhabitants of the region sometimes speak and hushed and
uneasy voices alluding to what they call divine wrath, in
a manner that, in later years vaguely increased the always
strong fascination which I felt for the forest darkened sepulcher.
(05:37):
One man only had perished in the fire when the
last of the hides was buried. In this place of
shade and stillness. The sad urnful of ashes had come
from a distant land to which the family had repaired.
When the mansion burned down. No one remains to lay
flowers before the granite portal, and few care to brave
the depressing shadows which seem to linger strangely about the
(05:58):
water worn stone. I shall never forget the afternoon when
I first stumbled upon the half hidden House of the Dead.
It was in midsummer, when the alchemy of nature transmutes
the Sylvan landscape to one vivid and almost homogeneous mass
of green. When the senses are well nigh intoxicated with
the surging seas of moist verdure and the subtly indefinable
(06:22):
odors of the soil and the vegetation in such surroundings,
the mind loses its perspective. Time and space become trivial
and unreal, and echoes of a forgotten, prehistoric pass beat
insistently upon the enthralled consciousness. All day I had been
wandering through the mystic groves of the Hollow, thinking thoughts
I need not discuss, and conversing with things I need
(06:44):
not name. In years a child of ten, I had
seen and heard many wonders unknown to the throng, and
was oddly aged in certain respects. When, upon forcing my
way between two savage clumps of briars, I suddenly encountered
the entrance of the vault. I had no knowledge of
what I had discovered. The dark blocks of granite, the
door so curiously ajar, and the funeral carvings above the
(07:07):
arch aroused in me. No associations of mournful or terrible
character of graves and tombs. I knew and imagined much,
but had, on account of my peculiar temperament, been kept
from all personal contact with churchyards and cemeteries. The strange
stone house on the Woodland slope was to me only
a source of interest and speculation, and its cold, damp
(07:30):
interior into which I vainly peered through the aperture so
tantalizingly left, contained for me no hint of death or decay.
But in that instant of curiosity was borne the madly
unreasoning desire which has brought me to this hell of confinement.
Spurred on by a voice which must have come from
the hideous soul of the forest, I resolved to enter
(07:51):
the beckoning gloom in spite of the ponderous change which
barred my passage in the waning light of day, I
alternately rattled the rusty impediments with a view to throwing
wide the stone door, an essay to squeeze my slight
form through the space already provided. But neither plan met
with success. At first curious, I was not frantic, and
(08:11):
when in the thickening twilight I returned to my home,
I had sworn to the hundred gods of the grove
that at any cost I would someday force an entrance
to the black, chilly depths that seemed calling out to me.
The physician with the iron gray beard who comes each
day to my room once told a visitor that this
decision marked the beginnings of a pitiful monomania. But I
(08:35):
will leave final judgment to my readers when they shall
have learnt all.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
So, basically where we're at right, Chuck, is that we
have a little weirdo kid who discovered a family tomb
that's been abandoned, yes in a grove. Tried to get in,
and he realized that he can't because he's too puny.
Yet he's drawn to it so much like his ex caliber.
Getting into this tomb is like something he's sworn to do.
Eventually sounds like it, but we find that he is
(09:02):
in an asylum.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
Well, little Jervis Dudley, Little.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Jervis Dudley, I'm going to take over now. Okay, okay.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
The months following my discovery were spent in feudal attempts
to force the complicated padlock of the slightly open vault,
and in carefully guarded inquiries regarding the nature and history
of the structure. With the traditionally receptive ears of the
small boy, I learned much, though an habitual secretiveness caused
me to tell no one of my information or my resolve.
(09:31):
It is perhaps worth mentioning that I was not at
all surprised or terrified on learning the nature of the vault.
My rather original ideas regarding life and death had caused
me to associate the cold clay with the breathing body
in a vague fashion, and I felt that the sinister
family of the burned down mansion was in some way
represented within the stone space I sought to explore. Mumbled
(09:52):
tales of the weird rights and godless revels of bygone
years in the ancient hall gave to me a new
and potent interest in the tomb, before whose doors I
would sit for long hours at a time each day.
Once I thrust a candle within the nearly closed entrance,
but could see nothing save a flight of damp stone
steps leading downward. The odor of the place repelled yet
(10:14):
bewitched me. I felt I had known it before, in
a past remote beyond all recollection, beyond even my tendency
of the body I now possess. The year after I
first beheld the tomb, I stumbled upon a worm eaten
translation of Plutarch's lives in the book filled attic of
my home. Reading the Life of Theseus, I was much
impressed by that passage telling of the great stone beneath
(10:37):
which the boyish hero was to find his tokens of
destiny whenever he should become old enough to lift its
enormous weight. This legend had the effect of dispelling my
keenest impatience to enter the vault, for it made me
feel that the time was not yet ripe. Later, I
told myself I should grow to a strength and ingenuity
which might enable me to unfasten the heavily chained door
(10:58):
with ease. But until till then, I would do better
by conforming to what seemed the will of fate. Accordingly,
my watches by the dank portal became less persistent, and
much of my time was spent in other, though equally
strange pursuits. I would sometimes rise very quietly in the night,
stealing out to walk in those churchyards and places of
(11:18):
burial from which I had been kept by my parents.
What I did there I may not say, for I
am not now sure of the reality of certain things.
But I know that on the day after such a
nocturnal ramble I would often astonish those about me with
my knowledge of topics almost forgotten.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
For many generations.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
It was after a night like this that I shocked
the community with a queer conceit about the burial of
the rich and celebrated Squire Brewster, a maker of local
history who was interred in seventeen eleven, and whose slate
headstone bearing a graven skull and crossbones, was slowly crumbling
to powder. In a moment of childish imagination, I vowed
not only that the undertaker, Goodman Simpson, had stolen the
(11:59):
silver buckled shoes, silken hose, and satin small clothes of
the deceased before burial, but that the Squire himself not
fully inanimate, had turned twice in his mound covered coffin
on the day of internment, So what's going on here?
So basically, the kid is resolved, like theseus, that his
(12:22):
destiny still awaits him. He's not ready for it yet,
so instead he's kind of going around, hanging around churchyard's
burial places, and he's coming back the next day with
weird knowledge, Chuck like knowledge. No living human should.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
Have knowledge that Jervis Dudley surely should not have.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Right, Chuck, have you taken over again?
Speaker 4 (12:43):
I'd like to, Okay, okay, but the idea of entering
the tomb never left my thoughts. Josh being indeed simulated
by the unexpected genealogical discover that my own maternal ancestry
possessed at least a slight link with a supposedly extra
family of the hides. Last of my paternal race, I was,
likewise the last of this older and more mysterious line.
(13:06):
I began to feel that the tomb was mine, and
to look forward with hot eagerness to the time when
I might pass within the stone door and down those
slimy stone steps into the dark. I now formed the
habit of listening very intently at the slightly open portal,
choosing my favorite hours of midnight stillness for the odd vigil.
(13:29):
By the time I came of age, I had made
a small clearing in the thicket before the mold stained
facade of the hillside, allowing the surrounding vegetation to encircle
and overhang the space like the walls and roof of
Sylvan Bower. This bower was my temple Josh, the fastened
door my shrine, and here I would lie outstretched on
(13:51):
the mossy ground, thinking strange thoughts and dreaming of strange dreams.
The night of the First Revelation was a sultry one.
I must have fallen asleep from fatigue, for it was
with a distinct sense of awakening that I heard the
voices of those tones and accents. I hesitate to speak
of their quality. I will not speak, but I may
(14:12):
say that they presented certain uncanny differences in vocabulary, pronunciation,
of mode, and utterance. Every shade of the New England dialect,
from the uncouth syllables of the Puritan colonists to the
precise rhetoric of fifty years ago, seemed represented in that
shadowy colloquy, though it was only later that I noticed
the fact. At the time, indeed, my attention was distracted
(14:34):
from this matter by another phenomenon, a phenomenon so fleeting
that I could not take oath upon its reality. I
barely fancied that as I awoke, a light had been
hurriedly extinguished within the sunken sepulcher. I do not think
I was either astounded or panic stricken, but I know
that I was greatly and permanently changed. That night, upon
(14:56):
returning home, I went with much directness to a rotting
chest in the attic, wherein I found the key, which
next day unlocked with ease the barrier I had so
long stormed in vain. The dude has a key in
his attic to this tomb, and he went directly to it.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
After this big nut.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Is his heat up. It was in the soft glow
of the late afternoon that I first entered the vault
on the abandoned slope. A spell was upon me, and
my heart leaped with an exultation I can but ill describe.
As I closed the door behind me and descended the
dripping steps by the light of my lone candle, I
seemed to know the way, and though the candle sputtered
(15:35):
with the stifling reek of the place, I felt singularly
at home in the musty charnel house air. Looking about me,
I beheld many marble slabs bearing coffins, or the remains
of coffins. Some of these were sealed and intact, but
others had nearly vanished, leaving the silver handles and plates
isolated amidst certain curious heaps of whitish dust. Upon one
(15:57):
plate I read the name Sir Jeffrey Hyde, who had
come from Sussex in sixteen forty and died here a
few years later. And a conspicuous alcove was one fairly
well preserved and untenanted casket, adorned with a single name,
which brought to me both a smile and a shudder.
An odd impulse caused me to climb upon the broad slab,
(16:17):
extinguish my candle, and lie down within the vacant box.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
So this guy is totally off his night at this point,
he's lying down in a coffin in the tune.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
In the gray light of dawn, I staggered from the
vault and locked the chain of the door behind me.
I was no longer a young man, though, but twenty
one winters had chilled my bodily frame. Early rising villagers
who observed my homeward progress looked at me strangely and
marveled at the signs of ribald revelry, which they saw
in one whose life was known to be a sober
(16:54):
and solitary one. I did not appear before my parents
till after a long and refreshing sleap.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
You're good at this, Chuck, Thanks, you're good.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
So you get what's going on here? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (17:08):
I think audible dot Com was gonna be calling us
any minute.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Now and say please stop.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
Yeah, we'll sue you, all right, Chuck, you ready? So
what's going on? Is this kid is lying down in
this tomb. He leaves the tomb. Is he older now?
Speaker 3 (17:21):
He's twenty one? Now?
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Remember he first found the tomb at age ten ten,
couldn't open it, resolved to figure out, you know, basically
just turned into a weirdo in other ways. And then finally,
when he's twenty one, he sees a light in this place. Yeah,
one night is changed. When he wakes up, he goes
directly to his own attic, his own attic finds the key,
(17:43):
finds the key.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
Gets in, lays down in the coffin, pretty new coffin.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Wakes up the next day, stumbles back home in the
morning and it looks like he'd been partying all night.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Yeah, and people are looking at him like he's weird,
which I can't figure out. This all seems very normal
to me.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
All right, you ready, May I please do? Henceforward? I
haunted the tomb each night, seeing, hearing, and doing things
I must never reveal. My speech, always susceptible to environmental influences,
was the first thing to succumb to the change. He
must have a thick tongue too, and my suddenly acquired
archaism of diction was soon remarked upon. Later, a queer
(18:22):
boldness and recklessness came into my demeanor, till I unconsciously
grew to possess the bearing of a man of the world.
Despite my lifelong seclusion. My former silent tongue waxed voluble
with the easy grace of a Chesterfield, with a godless
cynicism of a Rochester. I know you get that, Chuck.
I displayed a peculiar erudition, utterly unlike the fantastic Monkish
(18:45):
lore over which I had poured in my youth, and
covered the fly leaves of my books with facile, impromptu
epigrams which brought up suggestions of gay prior and the
sprightliest of Augustine wits and rhymsters. One morning at breakfast,
I came close to de z by declaiming impalpably licorice accents,
an effusion of eighteenth century Bacchanalian mirth, a bit of
(19:07):
Georgian playfulness never recorded in a book. So basically what
he's saying is he sounds like he's drunk in the mornings,
even though he's like a very sober, solitary, kind of
a reclusive kid, but he's starting to kind of change
into a party boy.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Now here, there's a few passages that we're not going
to read. We're gonna skip over these.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
Okay, yeah, the poetry.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
We're actually editing Lovecraft right now. Yeah, about this time
I conceived my present fear of fire and thunderstorms. Previously
indifferent to such things, I had now an unspeakable horror
of them, and would retire to the innermost recesses of
the house whenever the heavens threaten an electrical display. Yes,
a favorite haun of mine during the day was the
(19:54):
ruined cellar of the mansion that had burned down. Remember that,
Oh yeah, that's above the tomb, and in fancy I
would picture the structure as it had been in its prime.
On one occasion, I startled a villager by leading him
confidently to a shallow sub seller, of whose existence I
seemed to know, in spite of the fact that it
had been unseen and forgotten for many generations. At last
(20:19):
came that which I had long feared. My parents, alarmed
at the altered manner and appearance of their only son,
commenced to exert over my movements, a kindly espionage which
threatened to result in disaster. I had told no one
of my visits to the tomb, having guarded my secret
purpose with religious zeals since childhood. But now I was
forced to exercise care in threading the mazes of the
(20:40):
wooded hollow, that I might throw off a possible pursuer.
My key to the vault I kept suspended from a
cord about my neck, its presence known only to me.
I never carried out of the sepulcher any of the
things I came upon whilst within its walls. I like
that word, sepulcher. You've got twice, that was my first one.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
So what's going on here?
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Kids?
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Fraid of lightning and thunder?
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Remember that house? Yeah, this cellar of which he's visiting
was struck by lightning and burned out and one person
perished in it. And this is in the eighteenth century.
I think, yeah, long before this kid's running around, because
this was supposed to be contemporary in like the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
Right, okay, okay, Cherry's in there laughing. You ready my turn?
Speaker 3 (21:23):
I'm ready, Bud.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
One morning, as I emerged from the damp tomb and
fastened the chain of the portal with no too steady hand,
I beheld an adjacent thicket the dreaded face of a watcher.
See that's creepy.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Damn.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
Surely the end was near, for my bower was discovered
and the objective of my nocturnal journey is revealed. The
man did not accost me, so I hastened home in
an effort to overhear what he might report to my
care worn father. Were my sojourns beyond the chain door
about to be proclaimed to the world imagine my delighted
astonishment on hearing the spy inform my parents in cautious
(21:58):
whisper that I had spent the night in the bower
outside the tomb. My sleep filmed eyes fixed upon the
crevice where the padlocked portal stood. Ajar By what miracle
had the watcher thus deluded? I was now convinced that
a supernatural agency protected me. Made bold by this heaven
since circumstance, I began to resume perfect openness in going
(22:21):
to the vault, confident that no one would witness my entrance.
For a week, I tasted to the full the joys
of that charnal conviviality, which I must not describe. When
the thing happened and I was borne away to this
accursed abode of sorrow and monotony.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
So did you get what just happened? Uh?
Speaker 4 (22:43):
Yeah? He basically the guy said, this kid hasn't been going.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
In there, he's just been sleeping outside of it.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Yeah, but he feels like he's going in there. Sure
he's losing it or has he lost it? Or is he?
Or will he.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Find out? Right now?
Speaker 4 (23:01):
I should not have ventured out that night, for the
taint of thunder was in the clouds, and hellish phosphorescence
rose from the rank swamp at the bottom of the hollow.
The call of the dead, too was different. Instead of
the hillside tomb, it was the charred cellar on the
crest of the slope, whose presiding damon beckoned me with
unseen fingers. As I emerged from the intervening grove upon
(23:24):
the plain before the ruin, I beheld, in the misty moonlight,
a thing I had always vaguely expected. The mansion, gone
for a century, once more reared its stately height to
the raptured vision, every window ablaze with a splendor of
many candles. Up the long drive rolled the beaches of
the Boston gentry, whilst on foot came a numerous assemblage
(23:45):
of powdered exquisites from the neighboring mansions. With this throng
I mingled, though I knew I belong with the hosts
rather than the guests. Inside the hall were music, laughter,
and wine on every hand. Several faces I reckoned eyes,
though I should have known them better, had they been
shriveled or eaten away by death and decomposition. Amidst a
(24:06):
wild and reckless throng. I was the wildest and most abandoned.
Gay blasphemy poured in torrents from my lips and in
my shocking sallies. I heeded no law of God, man
or nature. Suddenly a peal of thunder resonant even above
the din of the Swinish revelry clave the very roof,
and laid a hush fear upon the boisterous company. Red
(24:29):
tongues of flame and searing gust of heat and gulf
the house, and the roisterers struck with terror. The descent
of a calamity, which seemed to transcend the bounds of
un guided nature, fled shrieking into the night. I alone
remained josh riveted to my seat by a groveling fear
which I had never felt before. And then a second
horror took possession of my soul. Burnt alive, the ashes
(24:50):
my body dispersed by the four winds. I might never
lie in the tomb of the hides. Was not my
coffin prepared for me? Had I not a right arrest
till eternity amongst the descendants of Sir Jeoffrey Hyde, I
I would claim my heritage of death, even though my
soul would go seeking through the ages for another corporeal
(25:11):
tenement to represent it on that vacant slab and the
alcove of the vault. Jervis Hide should never share the
sad fate of Palarinus.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Nice.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
He's Scottish. All of a sudden, yeah or whatever that was?
Speaker 3 (25:25):
You ready?
Speaker 4 (25:25):
Well, what's going on here? Is he clearly saw the
mansion and yeah, I mean it was rebuilt. There were guests,
ghostly guest and he went and partied as a host.
He felt like as a hide, Yeah, as a hide.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
And then what lightning came and took care of business
all over again.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah, he was at the party on the night that
it went down, that whole sad, ghastly business went down.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
Is he mad?
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Oh, let's find out all right? You ready? Yeah? May
I take it home?
Speaker 4 (25:53):
Yeah? The exciting conclusion of the tomb.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
As the phantom of the Burning House faded, I found
myself screaming and struggling madly in the arms of two men,
one of whom was the spy who had followed me
to the tomb. Rain was pouring down in Torrents, and
upon the southern horizon were flashes of the lightning that
had so lately passed over our heads. My father, his
face lined with sorrow, stood by as I shouted my
(26:16):
demands to be laid within the tomb, frequently admonishing my
captors to treat me as gently as they could. A
blackened circle on the floor of the ruined cellar told
of a violent stroke from the heavens, and from this
spot a group of curious villagers with lanterns were prying
a small box of antique workmanship, which the thunderbolt had
brought to light, ceasing my futile and now objectless writhing.
(26:39):
I watched the spectators as they viewed the treasure trove,
and was permitted to share in their discoveries. The box,
whose fastenings were broken by the stroke which unearthed it
contained many papers and objects of value, but I had
eyes for one thing alone. It was the porcelain miniature
of a young man in a smartly curled bag wig
and bore the initials J H. The face was such
(27:01):
that as I gazed, I might as well have been
studying my mirror.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
You got the a's messed up.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
On the following day, I was brought to this room
with the barred windows but I have been kept informed
of certain things through an aged and simple minded servitor,
for whom I bore a fondness in infancy, and who,
like me, loves the churchyard. What I have dared relate
of my experiences within the vault has brought me only
pitying smiles. My father, who visits me frequently, declares that
(27:30):
at no time did I pass the chained portal, and
swears that the rusted padlock had not been touched for
fifty years.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
When he examined it.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
He even says that all the village knew of my
journeys to the tomb, and that I was often watched
as I slept in the bower outside the grim facade,
my half open eyes fixed on the crevice that leads
to the interior. Against these insertions, I have no tangible
proof to offer, since my key to the padlock was
lost in the struggle on that night of horrors. The
strange things of the past which I learned during the
(28:00):
nocturnal meetings with the dead, he dismisses as the fruits
of my lifelong and omnivorous browsing amongst the ancient volumes
of the family library. Had it not been for my
old servant, Hiram. I should have by this time become
quite convinced of my madness. But Hiram, loyal to the last,
has held faith in me and has done that which
(28:20):
impels me to make public at least part of my story.
A week ago he burst open the lock which changed
the door of the tomb perpetually Ajar, and descended with
a lantern into the murky depths. On a slab in
an alcove, he found an old but empty coffin, whose
tarnished plate bears the single word jervis. In that coffin
(28:41):
and in that vault, they have promised me I shall
be buried.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
The end and scene.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Wow, the tomb HP Lovecraft.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
Pretty good, huh, i'd very creepy. Yeah, absolutely different time
back then, well much creepier obviously.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Yeah, I think this might have been in Amazing Stories
at first.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
You're Weird Stories, one of the two.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
In the TV show Amazing Stories.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
No, No, the old pulp comic book. Oh okay, yeah,
so hopefully that creeped.
Speaker 4 (29:15):
Everybody out right, Chuck, I'm creeped out.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
I'm creeped out too. What are you going to be
for Halloween?
Speaker 4 (29:20):
I don't know. The band is playing a gig and
we're all gonna dress alike, so something I'm lobbing for
something with mustaches, okay? Or maybe the taint of the thundercloud?
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Yes, which took?
Speaker 4 (29:34):
What are you going to be?
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Eight times? Eight takes for.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
Me to read that? Or are you laughing or Jerry laughing?
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Yeah? It was something messed that up.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
We should release the outtakes of the begin so U
I guess that's it. I got nothing.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Happy Halloween to everybody, Thank you care very much. Yeah, yes,
be safe out there. Remember if you're wearing an all
black costume, don't be stupid. Put some sort of reflective
material on it. Be careful of kids if you're driving,
Be careful of cars if you're a kid. And have
a happy, happy Halloween. And ta linus sitting in the
great Pumpkin Patch. There's always next to your pal.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
housetuffworks dot com.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
Want more house stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Works, check out our blogs on the house stuff works
dot com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented
twenty twelve Camri. It's ready, are you
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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