Lips are the toes of the face. Welcome to Night Vale.

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It’s Halloween again, Night Vale, my favorite day of the year. As a kid, my mother used to dress my sister, Abby, and I up in homemade costumes and take us door to door vaguely threatening our neighbors until they gave us candy.

When I was a teenager, I got a little old for trick-or-treating, so I started going to haunted houses with my friends. A lot of those haunted houses were kind of predictable, with all their chainsaw killers and Victorian ghost children singing nursery rhymes who would follow you home and sing by your bed for months afterward, but they always got to me. I loved the emotional rush of being scared.

I still do, of course. I don’t go out much to haunted houses, but I still love good, old-fashioned scary stories. I thought today would be a great day to share some of my favorites with you. I had my new Intern James put together a few spooky tales that are perfect for putting you in the Halloween mood. But first, let’s have a look at the community calendar.

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This Saturday night at the New Old Night Vale Opera House is the annual Costume Gala. This event is the opera house’s largest fundraiser, and one of the most prestigious costume contests in the region. A panel of judges will be on hand to determine the best costume at the ball. Last year’s winners were Joel Eisenberg and his partner Danny Jimenez who dressed in a tandem outfit of a stegosaurus. I was there, listeners, and it was impressive. The creature was so realistic-looking. The craftsmanship of the costume was top-notch, but I have to confess I’m always more into high-concept creativity than realistic details when it comes to costumes. I remember the 2015 Gala when Amal Shamoun came dressed up as the concept of ennui. She made herself 12 feet tall, dressed in a taupe long-coat, and created a constant drizzling rain inside the ballroom. Anyone who looked at her got super sad and wanted a hug. But Joel and Danny’s stegosaurus was fine.

Sunday afternoon is the Fall Craft Sale in Old Town Night Vale; an inscrutable maze of stalls showcasing the finest products from our town’s artisans. There will be cultural events for children, like finger painting classes, puppet shows, and a visit from the Autumn Specter. [turns slowly more sinister] The Autumn Specter returns. It comes to collect its crops. With its great and sharp sickle, it will harvest every ripe soul in Night Vale.

The Autumn Specter is hungry. It is October, and it is time to feed.

[beat]

James, this community calendar doesn’t seem right. It’s just a bunch of stuff about the Autumn Specter. Also this font size – what is this 32 point? – is much too large. And it’s printed in red ink. That’s a waste of our color toner, James. Ew. And this red ink is still really damp.

Plus, there’s nothing about start and end times of the Craft Fair, or anything about the food trucks. If the Autumn Specter is hungry, surely it wants some falafel or Korean barbecue or tacos. James, can you redo this story?

[beat]

James?

[kind of scared] James?

[normal; annoyed] Listeners, I don’t know where James went. I can hear him breathing, but I do not see him anywhere. Fine, let’s get on to our first spooky story.

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One quiet, moonless night, not long ago, and not so far away, a teenage girl sat in a house that was not her own. It was the home of Tony and Sheila McDowell. The girl was their babysitter, and she had just put the two young McDowell children down to sleep. The girl watched TV alone in the dark living room, only the bluish flicker of a scary movie illuminating her face. The phone rang, abrupt and loud, startling her.

She raised the receiver to her ear.

“Hello,” she said with a slight quiver.

“Have you checked on the children,” came a raspy voice.

The babysitter ran quickly upstairs, opening the door of the kids’ bedroom. She flipped on the light and there they were, fast asleep.

She went back to her movie, but the phone rang again. “Have you checked on the children,” came the same voice, only more sinister.

The babysitter, again, hurried upstairs, opened the door, turned on the light, and saw the children still asleep.

The caller called again. And again. And again: “Have you checked on the children?” The babysitter, so scared, barely able to move, hung up the phone before the voice could finish its repeated query.

When the phone rang once again, she answered and shouted “stop calling me!” But this time, it was a different voice.

The person on this occasion said: “Ma’am, this is the police. We’ve traced the call. The call is coming from inside the house. Get out. Get out!”

The babysitter panicked and started to run, but then she remembered… she never called the police. How would they know to even trace the call? She crept fearfully upstairs to the children’s room. The phone was ringing again, the clamoring bell igniting her fright. She cracked open the door and she saw… She saw the young McDowell boy and his little brother hunched over a phone and giggling.

They were pranking her, and she felt relieved, but embarrassed. She told them to stop fooling around and go to sleep, and they all shared a good laugh.

###

Let’s have a look now at traffic.

[sifting through papers looking for traffic; annoyed]

Well, I don’t seem to have a traffic report from Intern James. And James isn’t here right now, because I sent him out to go pick up lunch a few min—

[beat]

James? James, why are you standing in the control booth? You were supposed to go get lunch. Also, I’ve asked you a couple of times not to wear that burlap bag over your head. It looks great, with the jack o’lantern face drawn on it. I mean the mouth is a bit lopsided and the eyes are a tad uneven, kind of flat and emotionless. All in all, it’s a cool look. But it’s decidedly not allowed in Station Management’s dress code.

Oh! You’re holding a knife, too. Did you already get lunch, then? If that’s the case, you don’t need to cut my sandwich in half. I’ll take it whole.

Also, I need that traffic report. Thanks.

James?

[joking but fearful] What are you waiting for? The Autumn Specter to do it for you? Hop to it, James.

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While James is working on that, let’s get back to my favorite spooky Halloween stories. This one isn’t a story so much as a fun Halloween game: The Legend of Bloody Mary. According to the lore, if you turn off all the lights and stare into a mirror repeating “bloody mary” three times in a row, she will appear and tear your face off.

I’ve never tried this, because I don’t own any mirrors, but my husband Carlos conducted this very experiment in his science lab. He said he darked the room and repeated the name and nothing happened for a long time. But then a figure of a woman appeared, silvery gray and shimmering. She approached Carlos slowly, her hollow white eyes never blinking.

She brought her face only inches from Carlos and said: [valley girl-ish] “Are you for real?”

Carlos said yes, he was indeed real.

And Bloody Mary said: “Okay, because this time of year, I just get a bunch of giggling screaming teenagers, and I’m really tired of ripping off their faces for no pay whatsoever.”

And Carlos gave her some resources for starting a union, and she thanked him. She offered to tear his face off in exchange for the consulting, but Carlos said no, he liked his face, and wished her luck.

Night Vale, pay your malevolent spirits. They’re overworked, especially around Halloween. And a 20% gratuity for poltergeists, phantasms, revenants, and ghosts is standard.

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And now for traff—

[shuffling papers]

You know, I thought Intern James had handed the traffic report to me, but this is a piece of parchment with a nine-pointed star seemingly drawn by a finger dripped in blood. And then there are a series of ancient runes scrawled along the outer edges.

Now, I took Runic in college. Most of my friends took Spanish as their language, but I thought living here in the American Southwest, it would be more useful to study ancient Scandinavian and Germanic alphabets. From what I can make out these are a message about the return of the Autumn Specter.

*sigh*

Okay, I love that Intern James loves Halloween and whatever this Autumn Specter is. In fact, James is still in the breakroom right now constructing a sacred totem out of ash tree branches and twine. He’s been muttering to himself all day in a language I don’t recognize. The only words I can understand are “Autumn Specter.”

But I still have neither my traffic report nor my lunch.

Wait.

Do you think James is…. No. Put it out of your mind, Cecil.

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Let’s tell another spooky Halloween story.

There was once a beautiful young woman who wore a green ribbon around her neck. She won the affection of a handsome young man. They fell in love, and one day the boy asked the girl why she always wore a green ribbon around her neck. She would not tell him.

One day the man and the woman were to become husband and wife. In her white bridal dress the woman still wore her green ribbon. The man asked her on their wedding night if he could untie the green ribbon, but even on the most intimate of evenings, she said no, and he respected her answer. But he longed to know what she was hiding behind the ribbon.

Through the years, the man asked the wife again about the ribbon, but she never removed it, nor answered his questions about it. She only warned him that he would not like what he saw if she were to remove it. He asked less and less, but his curiosity grew and grew.

They became old, very old, and they knew their time left was short. The man asked one more time: “My dearest wife, love of my life, tell me that I may remove the green ribbon from around thy neck.”

The old woman said: “My adoring groom, here in our room, after all these many years, yes, you may. But I caution you, as I have many times before, that you shall not like what your eyes behold.”

The man hesitated, but finally reached his weakened, wrinkled fingers to the green bow along her nape. He tentatively pulled the ribbon, and suddenly it unfurled falling from her neck. The man gasped.

Upon her neck was a series of ornate letters spelling out “GOTH LIFE”

The woman said: “I got this tattoo in high school but kind of outgrew it. It’s super embarrassing.”

The man replied: “It is for sure weird. But also pretty cool. I like it.”

And she never wore the ribbon again.

###

Listeners, I’d love to bring you that traffic report, but right nowI’m facing something much more urgent, more dire.

My studio door has opened on its own, and as I turned around, I could see down the long, faintly lit corridor of our offices. At the end of the hallway stands a figure. He wears a jack o’lantern mask, his head crooked to one side, like a dog asking a question, or like a hanged man. Or both.

It is Intern James. And he holds a long knife and he walks. He walks slowly toward me. He is speaking, at first in a mutter, but now louder, a restrained shout in an obscure tongue. Like a magician casting a wicked spell. He is moving much faster toward me, a limping run. His blade raised high.

James is not an intern, Night Vale, but the Autumn Specter itself, come to reap my soul.

[suddenly calm, professional] But before he does that, let me take you to the weather.

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WEATHER: “Welterweight” by Nels Andrews. https://nelsandrews.bandcamp.com/

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So, during the weather, I went to Human Resources and requested a file on Intern James. (I’m fine by the way. And James is not the Autumn Specter, but I’ll get to that.)

I found a copy of James’s resume and cover letter for the position of radio station intern. His application was originally submitted in 1845. That’s almost 2 centuries ago, I exclaimed, but according to HR they’re pretty backlogged on intern apps. “What are you going to do? We get to them when we get to them,” they said from the bottom of their abandoned well.

Paperclipped to James’ application was a wrinkled and yellowed news clipping from the Night Vale Daily Journal. The article says that James died on Halloween night in 1849 when he was hit by a train. I then went to the Hall of Public Records and found that our radio station was built in 1850, atop the very train tracks where James met his end.

James’s soul has been wandering the halls and offices of our radio station ever since. For all James ever wanted to be was a radio intern, to serve the listening community, to lift high the voice of journalistic truth. And it was his death that led to the shutdown of those train tracks and the eventual construction of a new station home, and the building we still use now.

I was wrong about James. He was an intern, after all, and not a malevolent Halloween spirit. But I was right that the Autumn Specter had come for me. For when I had turned to see James running down the hall, I did not notice the Autumn Specter behind me, with its bony hands and scarecrow mouth. I did not notice its soul-reaping sickle, which it had raised high above its oversized head and stick-thin body.

James had given his life for the building of our radio station. And in death, he gave his soul for the very same cause. James threw himself upon the Autumn Specter. He tried to stab the Specter’s neck and chest, but it did nothing. The Specter pushed James aside and then turned its black coal eyes upon me. It raised its curved blade once again, and swung. I tried to duck but was too slow. And just as the sickle’s edge reached my face, James dove in front of it and vanished in a burst of white flame as he was struck. The room was empty, the Autumn Specter gone too.

To the family and friends of Intern James, he was… an okay Intern. Not always on top of his writing deadlines, but he literally sacrificed his soul for our radio station. I can’t bring you a traffic report today, but I will live to bring you one tomorrow. If we find a new intern.

HR tells me we have hundreds of candidates, although most of them are not yet aware they are candidates.

Stay tuned next for our new cooking competition show: “Flay Bobby Flay”

As always. Good night Night Vale. Good night.

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PROVERB: The road to hell is paved with cobblestone. It's super bumpy. Not at all comfortable, and really bad for your car's suspension.