“Tell Me a Story” was an instant hit. Not every account was scary or even all that entertaining, if I’m being honest. But I think the real appeal was in the fact that I was giving people a forum to talk about their own lives. My NoSleep peeps will be familiar with the drill: the stories were all true. I wasn’t there to call bullshit or pick apart details. My job was simply to listen and because this was live radio, if need be, keep the storyteller on track with an occasional question or comment.
I think the thing that really attracted listeners was that you never knew what you were going to hear next. One caller would recount in vivid detail the harrowing tale of the time they survived a plane crash and the next would be some frat boy bragging about that night when he started puking while doing a keg-stand and refused to let his brothers put him down until the keg was floated because real men puke WHILE they rally.*
*For the record, kids, they do not.
Professor Mox was so thrilled about the success of my first show that he immediately moved me to the Friday night timeslot, which didn’t exactly help the already tense relationship between me and the rest of the station’s staff. But we’ll get to that soon enough. First, I’d like to share with you what was probably my all-time favorite “Tell Me a Story” segment…
CHAPTER 3: Sleepover
The Friday before Kate’s 14th birthday, she invited her two best friends Becky and Johanna to stay over at her house. Kate’s actual birthday party was the next day and all of the girls from their class would be coming over then but tonight was the VIP event, as Kate saw it. Her dad got them a cookie-cake from the grocery store and even let the girls rent an R-rated horror movie (this was back in ‘02, when video stores were still a thing. For my younger readers, imagine Netflix was a building and the “Watch Instantly” button was a pretentious film student making $7.50 an hour.)
“Just don’t tell your mother,” he had said with a wink as Kate’s father took the DVD case from her and they started towards the counter. “And when the three of you are begging to sleep on the floor in our room later, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Unfortunately the movie was a total dud and the girls, having been left wanting for the thrill of something genuinely frightening, started exchanging scary stories. It wasn’t long before they landed on the topic of the supposedly haunted house that was located less than a block from Kate’s own home. You know the kind of place. Every town’s got one.
The Ellis House was an old two-story colonial that was supposedly haunted by the ghost of Margo Ellis, one of the home’s former residents. The story went that Margo’s husband Gregory was an abusive drunk who never let her leave the house and would beat her on a daily basis. This was the 1930s, when things like battered women’s shelters were still a novel concept and domestic violence was a ticketable offense. Eventually, the endless abuse and living in constant fear became too much for Margo and she decided that her only option was to kill herself.
Of course as these things often do, the story evolved over time to include a multitude of unsubstantiated claims such as how before offing herself, Clair had drawn pentagrams all over the floor and a ring of black candles had been arranged just below where she was found hanging in the upstairs hallway. The official legend stated that Margo’s suicide had actual been the final step in a ritual she’d conducted hoping to curse her husband and the house that had become her prison; an anecdote which no doubt stemmed from the fact that two weeks after Margo’s suicide, Gregory turned up dead as well.
