The light dims, the air nips, and the timbre of the voice lowers.
It's time for harvesting the stories of the season, and we're looking for yours. But first, let me set the scene.
Trucks rumble into what Ray Bradbury called October Country. I imagine my listeners powering their rigs into, "that country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts."
Truckers move through landscapes of shedding color, deliver bounties to communities staging fall festivals, and remember with nostalgia their own childhoods on the farm. Equipment sits idle, scarecrows cast empty eyes over empty fields, and the darkness of the surrounding woods creeps a little closer. Drivers move too fast to see whatever lurks in the shadows. But they can sense them. They are aware something sinister has emerged, waiting. Its time is almost here.
If you listen to Dave Nemo Weekends, you'll know it's no secret I love this season. While I have never desired an endless summer or a world of perpetual Christmas, I do daydream of an extended fall. A suspended world that allows me the time to become a leaf peeper, a scare seeker, and a haunt enthusiast. Since it is impossible to arrest time, I use my allotted eight hours on the weekend to bring that world to me. The show's programming this month brims with fall photographers, chilling authors, terrifying podcasters, ghoulish gamers, enthusiastic fall festivalists, and spook house proprietors.
All of them have a story to tell, and those stories are why I love this time of year so much. It is perfect for telling tales. If the weather is accommodating, a simple recipe is all that is required. The story must have the patina of truth, the location where it is told must suggest the events of the tale, and, crucially, the storyteller must be in command of the frightening information. In other words, "it could have happened, it could have happened here, and I believe the teller of this tale."
Get all of that right, and there is only one more element to complete the trip to October Country.
Perfection emanates from a singular source of light. Stay away from a well illuminated living room, a floodlit front porch, or an electrified barn. That's too much. We require just enough light and no more. Reading lamps to sit under, campfires to lean into, fireplaces gathered around, or flashlights fixed under the face are what we demand to set the mood. Just enough light to illuminate the source of the story, but not enough to break the suspension of disbelief. Because what singular light creates is not illumination but shadow.
And inside shadow lies doubt. Doubt that there is safety beyond the light. Doubt the light can hold off what is just outside it. Those antagonistic shadows become a conjuring space for the overactive imagination. The words of the tale slip into the surrounding darkness, summoning what lurks inside it. The words echo within that negative space. A Whisperer in Darkness, if you will, plays with words like "ghost," "spectre," or "ghoul" over and over, long after they have left the storyteller's mouth, the cadavers of uttered words building something monstrous, until you can almost see the entity waiting for the dying light to flicker out.
Shadow snuffs out the light, and in that pitch black, something long, low, and guttural growls. Roars. Then, silence.
All of it followed by peals of laughter. Rather than anger at the storyteller for the cardiac jumpstart, the listeners revel in their reactions, agree it was the payoff they sought, and, satiated, head their separate ways to the safety of home and bed. Some will share the story with others in the hopes they can elicit similar responses. Others will begin to plan a tale of their own to equal or even exceed the effects of what they just heard. After all, one good scare deserves another.
It's time for harvesting stories, and I am looking for yours.
You see, there is another singular source of light that I have not mentioned. It comes inside a perfect performance space for a particular tale of mystery, imagination, and terror. That light, one many of you know intimately, is the glow of the dashboard illuminating those who drive by night. It summons stories of the road. Phantom diners, cursed railroad crossings, headless motorcycle riders, hitchhikers with mysterious motives, unidentified lights that hover above highways, and, of course, the silhouette of a black dog that waits in the road. You know at least one version of them all. You've told them in diners where the parking lot lights only extended so far. You heard them at rest areas that carried shady histories. I'm willing to bet you've even skipped a specific exit ramp in order to avoid finding out if the terrible fate that supposedly awaits is true.
The Weekend 34 is looking for stories that you've heard and that you've lived, stories best told by the dashboard light. The only rule is that the terror has to come from the road. Raise our hackles, and we'll use them the weekend before Halloween. We'll tell them on the air, we'll turn them into paranormal podcasting adventures, or we'll invite you to share them yourself by giving us a call. We're working on a bigger project about how these stories come into existence and how they are most effectively told. We want you to be a part of it.
But it all begins with you sending us your tale at weekends@radionemo.com. Include "Long Haul Horror" in the subject heading, and be sure to include your name and a good way to contact you.