Uh, hi, it’s me, Joseph Fink, co-writer and creator of this podcast, Welcome to Night Vale.

So because of some scheduling issues that are too boring to get into here, we had to delay the episode that was planned for today, but don’t worry, we still have a special treat for you all. For years now we’ve gotten emails asking us questions about the making of Night Vale, and our favorite characters, and what we think about this or that. And mostly we just don’t have the time or energy to answer every single one of those. But I thought it would be cool today to take a few of the most interesting emails and give them the answers they deserve.

So this first one is from Lucy in Claremont, hi Lucy!, and she writes.

“Hi whoever this is,

I don’t know what you’re getting at with this show, or why you’re claiming to write it. These are actual broadcasts from an actual town. I can hear it on my radio right now. How did you find this radio station, what do you know about Night Vale, and why are you pretending that you wrote any of this? I want answers.”

Uh.

Huh.

Well, ok, sorry I didn’t pick these emails out, actually. I know I kind of tried to make it sound like they were hand selected, but our business manager Joella actually… you know, thanks Joella! But, this is definitely a weird…Honestly not sure what to say about this one.

Lucy left her phone number. I mean I get that it’s just a joke, but you know, might be interesting to call her. Ok, you know, I’m going to do it. Hold on.

[ringing phone]

LUCY: Hello?

JOSEPH: Oh, hi. Oh wow. I didn’t know anyone picked up anymore what with all the…anyway, is this Lucy from Claremont?

LUCY: Who is this?

JOSEPH: Right, yes. This is Joseph Fink with Welcome to Night Vale. You wrote in, and thank you, but I was a little confused-

LUCY: Oh, so you’re the ones passing that work off as your own.

JOSEPH: But it is our work. I’ve been writing it since-

LUCY: Look, I don’t know what your deal is, but I’ve been listening to broadcasts from Night Vale for decades.

JOSEPH: Decades.

LUCY: Yeah, on the radio. You know, like podcasts but hosted in the atmosphere.

JOSEPH: What’s the frequency?

LUCY: They don’t come on any specific frequency. They just sometimes find me when I’m listening to something else. Joe Frank on KCRW. Staind on KROQ back when that was a sentence that made sense. The normal signal wavers, and then static and then Cecil. Is that how it works for you?

JOSEPH: No, because we’re a podcast. I wrote these episodes. And we’ve never licensed them for terrestrial radio.

LUCY: I don’t know why you called me just to keep up the charade. I was excited to hear from someone else who knew about this show, but if you’re just going to keep lying...

JOSEPH: I don’t think I’m lying….Lucy? Lucy? She hung up.

I don’t feel like I have any better handle on what’s happening here, but I’m going to reach out to Cecil. Cecil Baldwin, narrates our show, lives in Brooklyn, is an actor, you know?

[phone starts ringing]

So I’m going to call him. See what he thinks about this.

CECIL: [completely out of character] Hi, you’ve reached Cecil Baldwin. I don’t listen to my voicemails, but go ahead and leave one.

JOSEPH: Hey Cecil, uh, it’s Joseph. Just have kind of a weird issue going on. Nothing to worry about, but give me a call. I’ll just text you. That’s what people do. Never mind. Don’t bother listening to this. I’ll just text you.

Let me call Jeffrey Cranor. That’s my co-writer. We write this show together. Because it’s a fictional show. It’s not real. It’s scripts. And then actors read the scripts.

[phone ringing]

JEFFREY: Hey, what’s up?

JOSEPH: oh, hey, this is going to sound weird,

JEFFREY: Yeah?

JOSEPH: Did you see the email from Lucy yesterday. It was sent to our info-at-nightvale address.

JEFFREY: Lucy [beeped out]?

JOSEPH: That’s the one.

JEFFREY: Let me see… Ah! [reading aloud to himself] Hi whoever this is, I don’t know what you’re getting at….actual broadcast from an actual town…why are you pretending [stops reading] I dunno. It’s a weird fan email. We get those sometimes. Probably don’t respond, I would say.

JOSEPH: I called her.

JEFFREY: Ok.

JOSEPH: She insists that she can hear the broadcasts on her radio and that Night Vale is real.

JEFFREY: But it’s not. So.

JOSEPH: No, I know. I know. You know what, this was silly. Sorry for bothering you. Tell your cats hi.

JEFFREY: Oh I will tell them that right now! Reba! Barry! Carol! Uncle Joseph says hi!

[Jeffrey hangs up]

JOSEPH: Ok, so I’m just like, googling Night Vale. Which usually comes up with a picture of, I dunno. Our books. Or our live shows. Or fan art. Top result is our website usually. But that’s not, ok that’s not what I’m seeing.

Town of Night Vale. Population, founding date, Wikipedia link. The city itself has a Wikipedia page. It’s pretty extensive. There are user pics of Grove Park and the Moonlite All-Nite Diner, and. Ok, hold on. I’m going to google the Moonlite All-Nite.

It has a yelp listing. Ouroboros Rd. Night Vale. Open 24 hours. 4.3 stars with 267 reviews. “You have to try the Invisible Pie” says Luann. “It’s just an empty plate and also it’s delicious.”

None of this stuff was here before. There was a fan wiki, I think. [clicking of keyboard keys] Where did the fan wiki go? I’m clicking on our own site. Welcome to Night Vale.com and it’s. A page for a Burger King in Toledo, Ohio. There’s a close-up picture of a deep fryer, weird choice, and a notice that they’re hiring.

I think our site got hacked. That’s a thing right? Burger King hacking podcast sites. I think I heard about that on All Things Considered.

I need to….I’m going to call Cecil Baldwin again. Obviously, he’s the actor reading the scripts, so he knows that it’s fake. And it would be helpful, I think, right now, for me to hear that? I dunno, I don’t need an excuse, I’m just going to…

[phone ringing]

[in character as Cecil Palmer]

CECIL: Hi, you’ve reached Cecil. I don’t listen to my voicemails, but go ahead and leave one.

[hangs up]

JOSEPH: That’s ok. I’ll call him later. He’ll be available later.

It’s just…so I’ve been writing Welcome to Night Vale scripts since early 2012. I started out writing this paragraph about lights above the Arby’s and it just felt right, and I kept following that feeling. I was 25 years old. So if Night Vale is real, if these are actual broadcasts from a small desert town, then…what have I been writing? Who am I? Where do I fit in this reality?

You know, these aren’t small questions. Not a small thing, finding out that your fiction is real now, I guess. Could I go visit Night Vale? No, I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. Oh wait. the Delta app shows there are direct flights from JFK to the Randy Newman Memorial Night Vale Airport. [beat] I wouldn’t.

[a short clip of Mal Blum’s San Cristobol plays from phone speakers]

Hey Jeffrey. What’s up?

JEFFREY: So. I’ve been doing some digging and…well I think I know what’s going on.

JOSEPH: Ok, great. I’m glad someone does.

JEFFREY: Night Vale is real now.

JOSEPH: It became real.

JEFFREY: Well, it’s always been real. It’s a town, in the southwest, a very very weird town. And it exists and always has. But that wasn’t the case even yesterday.

JOSEPH: This is, if I’m honest, not making a ton of sense to me.

JEFFREY: That’s because it’s simultaneously super confusing and completely simple. Night Vale was never real. And then, one day, it was always real. It went from fiction to nonfiction, and when that happened, its entire history became nonfiction too, and so it always existed.

JOSEPH: I don’t know how to react to that.

JEFFREY: Yeah, it’s wild. Hey, did you see the expense report Joella sent.

JOSEPH: Uh, I haven’t looked at it yet. So what does that mean for us? If we wrote this fiction, and now this fiction is real, does that mean…are we Gods? Are we in danger?

JEFFREY: Never was great on theology, but both of those are possible. I mean, I’d say danger is more likely than us suddenly being divine. Carol, no! Sorry, Carol has learned that she can climb curtains.

JOSEPH: That cat’s a real bowl of mashed potatoes.

JEFFREY: She used to be when she was a kitten. Now she’s more of a teenage dirtbag.

JOSEPH: I’m still extremely caught up in this Night Vale is real now thing. Do you know if Cecil’s ok? I mean, our Cecil?

JEFFREY: Not sure. [to Carol] No! Sorry, Carol is acting out. I have to go.

JOSEPH: Oh. Uh. Bye.

So, this seems a good time to try Cecil again. He probably was just a little busy, it’s usually a busy time of year for him, probably didn’t see my calls yet. I’ll just…give me one moment

[phone ringing]

AUTOMATED VOICE: The number you have dialed does not exist. Please hang up and try again.

JOSEPH: What the f- I don’t- Ok.

Sorry, I’m just going to pause this recording for a bit, so I can drive down to Cecil’s apartment. I need to understand what’s happening. I will be back in a moment. This is just one of those things. You ever had one of those days that’s a day, you know? It’s just A Day, capital A, capital D. In the meantime, here’s a song I like.

Weather: “Hey“ by Standpoint feat. Lady Daisy River, https://soundcloud.com/standpoint-1

[sound note: for the following, we are outside, and then in an echoey indoor space. we should hear, to some extent, the sounds he is describing. Maybe for the man with the microphones talking we just hear muffled grumbling, an off-putting approximation of speech.]

I, ok, I went to Cecil’s apartment. No answer on the bell, but the front door was open so I went up and knocked. Nothing again. It was unlocked so I went inside. On the other side of the door was a back hallway of a restaurant, it looked like. White tile. White walls. A door that said storeroom. Three bathrooms, the usual. So I went down the hallway, calling for Cecil, just like “hey Cecil, you there?” and I was in a diner. And there were all these people looking at me.

A woman walked up. She had on a nametag that said “LAURA” and she had branches growing out of her chest and her arms and her neck, and that sounds whimsical, but I want you to imagine the reality of that. The strange rough skin where the flesh meets bark, and the way it twists up out of the body. It was a lot to try to wrap my head around. This woman, Laura, asked me: “Are you looking for Cecil? He’s not here right now. He’s usually at the radio station.”

I thanked her. And I stumbled out.

It’s sunset, right now, where I am, in this small desert town. The wind is hot, and it smells like honey, and mud. There is a loud thumping sound as a black helicopter flies overhead, disappearing into the last of the sunlight behind the mountains. A man walks up, he is covered in microphones, more microphone than man, and he says “interloper, what are you doing here?” And I say “I don’t know how I got here, I don’t understand what is happening.” And he nods sympathetically and says “That’s common.” The whole time he is furiously scribbling down notes in a notepad and blinking red recording lights flash all over his body like a city seen from an overnight flight. “I have to go,” I say. And I start running.

That’s where I am now. Running down this road, in a desert town I invented. I’m passing by a strip mall where there is Big Rico’s Pizza. I made up that name. I made up that name. And here it is. Sign in the window. “Now serving wheat and wheat by-products.” But what’s in the kitchen doesn’t look like wheat. That looks. Oh my god. Oh god. Ok, keep moving.

Next door there is the laboratory. In bright and buzzing neon lights: “Carlos’s Lab: Science While U Wait.” And then another big neon sign of a guy in a lab coat and his leg does a high kick, in a repeating animation. There is police tape all over the door, lots of signs saying “WARNING: SCIENCE” and “CURIOSITY FORBIDDEN”. Lots of old police tape, peeling and layered on top of each other.

Down the road I can see the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex. Looks like it’s really hopping tonight. Guess that’s where everyone is. Parking lot full of cars and government agents taking down the license plate numbers of the vehicles and then giving the slips of papers to birds who fly away to make nests with them.

And oh. Oh. Oh. There’s the radio station. It’s not how I imagined. A windowless concrete structure. Looks abandoned, weather beaten, cursed by god, it looks like no human being has breathed within it in a thousand years. I guess I have to…I guess I’m going in. I’m at the door. It’s chained shut but the lock has rusted off. I’m pulling off the chains. I’m opening the doors.

[sound of doors opening and entering building]

Its smells like malt and dust. There’s no lights on. It doesn’t seem like there’s any power. I see a door that says station management. I hear movement inside, but I’m not, I wouldn’t, I’m not going to go in there obviously. The door is warm. It’s hot actually. Ow.

Well, I guess this has been Listener Questions. Thanks to everyone who wrote in. Sorry I couldn’t get to all of you. Let’s do one more, just to round out the episode.

Martín asks: What was the most fun episode to make? Great question Martín. There’s so many-

What was that?

[long pause]

What was that?

[pause]

Sorry, I thought I saw… It was nothing. There’s no one else in here. It’s dark and abandoned.

Well Martín I liked making Episode 67 Best Of, that was fun. And episode 71 The Registry of Middle School Crushes was a good time to write. Thanks for your email, and thanks for listening.

That was nothing. There was nothing behind me. Because nothing looks like that.

Hold on, I hear someone talking. Hello?

I see a light on. I think it might be the booth. Cecil?

[Cecil’s voice gradually gets louder, as though we are approaching the source. We hear Joseph’s movement slightly, he is carrying the mic.]

CECIL: Settling in to be another clear and pretty evening here in Night Vale. I hope all of you out there have someone to sleep through it with, or at least good memories of when you did. Good night, Night Vale.

[suddenly very very close]

Goodnight

[the sound cuts out in an upsetting way]