WEBVTT - The Tomb 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:03.720 Brought to you by the reinvented twenty twelve Camra. It's ready. 0:00:03.920 --> 0:00:09.119 Are you welcome to stuff you should know from HowStuffWorks 0:00:09.119 --> 0:00:23.119 dot com? 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:27.240 Heyden, Welcome to the podcast. A very special podcast, right, Chuck, 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:30.200 A spectacular if you will. Happy Halloween to all of 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:33.000 you out there. This should come out a couple of 0:00:33.080 --> 0:00:36.160 days before it before, but we wanted to make sure 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:39.320 that we weren't going to miss it, and so we're 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:43.920 releasing a special Halloween podcast that's right for this year. 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:44.720 Little something new. 0:00:44.880 --> 0:00:48.559 Yeah, and what we're doing is not in any way, 0:00:48.600 --> 0:00:53.920 shape or form scientific. It is, in fact pure fiction 0:00:54.560 --> 0:01:01.240 or is it it is? Okay, we're going to read 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:04.040 just to make sure we scare you guys, good and proper. 0:01:04.120 --> 0:01:08.000 This Halloween and HP Lovecraft short story that was published 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:11.520 in nineteen twenty two, and it's entitled The Tomb, Right. 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:11.959 That's right. 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:12.720 Did you like this? 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:14.600 It was? It was good. 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:16.679 I think it's a great short story. It's one of 0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:17.360 my faves. 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:18.000 Awesome. 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:22.720 Okay, I should probably preface this with Chuck is uncertain 0:01:22.720 --> 0:01:24.800 about how this is gonna go. So if it goes good, 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:27.440 that means you're hearing it. If not, it'll be locked 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:30.240 away forever in a vault of some sort, possibly a tomb. 0:01:30.280 --> 0:01:30.679 Right, tomb? 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:34.679 Yeah, so, Chuck, are you ready? I am, I'm spooky, 0:01:34.720 --> 0:01:36.520 I'm loose, I'm a little nervous, am I said? 0:01:36.600 --> 0:01:38.319 Oh, yeah, right, all right. 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:41.880 I'm gonna start. Okay, okay, all right, ready, I'm ready 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:48.720 the tomb by HP Lovecraft, in relating the circumstances which 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:51.720 have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, 0:01:52.120 --> 0:01:54.520 I am aware that my present position will create a 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:57.920 natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative. It is 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:00.960 an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:04.000 limited in its mental vision to weigh with patience and 0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:08.240 intelligence those isolated phenomena seen and felt only by a 0:02:08.360 --> 0:02:13.079 psychologically sensitive few, which lie outside its common experience. Men 0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:15.840 of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction 0:02:16.000 --> 0:02:19.280 betwixt the real and the unreal, that all things reappear 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:22.600 as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:25.760 physical and mental media through which we are made conscious 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:29.799 of them. But the prosaic materialism of the majority condemns 0:02:29.800 --> 0:02:33.720 his madness. The flashes of supersight which penetrate the common 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:37.640 veil of obvious empiricism, so I should probably say right here, Chuck, 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:38.079 that it. 0:02:38.040 --> 0:02:39.840 Gets a lot better. Okay, Okay. 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:43.400 My name is Jervis Dudley, and from earliest childhood I 0:02:43.440 --> 0:02:46.240 have been a dreamer and a visionary, wealthy beyond the 0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:50.000 necessity of a commercial life, and temperamentally unfitted for the 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:53.640 formal studies and social recreations of my acquaintances. I have 0:02:53.760 --> 0:02:58.160 dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world, spending 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:00.959 my youth and adolescence in ancient and life little known books, 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:03.440 and in roaming the fields and groves of the region 0:03:03.480 --> 0:03:06.480 near my ancestral home. I do not think that what 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:08.800 I read in these books or saw in these fields 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:11.919 and groves was exactly what other boys read and saw there. 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:15.200 But of this I must say little, since detailed speech 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:18.440 would but confirm those cruel slanders upon my intellect, which 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:21.520 I sometimes overhear from the whispers of the stealthy attendants 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:24.280 around me. It is sufficient for me to relate events 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:27.600 without analyzing causes. I have said that I dwelt apart 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:29.400 from the visible world, but I have not said that 0:03:29.440 --> 0:03:32.720 I dwelt alone. This no human creature may do for 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:36.160 lacking the fellowship of the living, he inevitably draws upon 0:03:36.200 --> 0:03:39.000 the companionship of the things that are not or are 0:03:39.040 --> 0:03:42.680 no longer living. Close by my home there lies a 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:44.440 singular wooded hollow, in. 0:03:44.440 --> 0:03:45.960 Whose twilight deeps. 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:49.760 I spent most of my time, reading, thinking, and dreaming. 0:03:50.120 --> 0:03:53.119 Down its moss covered slopes, my first steps of infancy 0:03:53.160 --> 0:03:57.560 were taken, and around its grotesquely gnarled oaks, my first 0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:00.880 fancies of boyhood were woven. Did I come to know 0:04:00.960 --> 0:04:03.920 the presiding dry heads of those trees? And often have 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:06.600 I watched their wild dances in the struggling beams of 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:09.880 waning moon. But of these things I must not now speak. 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:12.320 I will tell only of the lone tomb in the 0:04:12.400 --> 0:04:16.080 darkest of the hillside thickets, the deserted tomb of the Hides, 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:20.000 an old and exalted family whose last direct ascendant had 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:24.080 been laid within the black recesses many decades before my birth. 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:30.200 Take it, chuck, So there's a family called the Hides. Yeah, 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:31.680 and there's a tomb. 0:04:31.880 --> 0:04:32.120 Yeah. 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:34.280 Okay, that's where the Hides are, gotcha? 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:34.760 Okay? 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:38.920 The vault to which I refers in ancient granite, weathered 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:42.800 and discolored by the mists and dampness of generations excavated 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:45.200 back into the hillside. The structure is visible only at 0:04:45.240 --> 0:04:48.640 the entrance. The door, a ponderous and forbidding slab of stone, 0:04:49.040 --> 0:04:52.200 hangs upon rusted iron hinges, and is fastened a jar 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:55.840 in a queerly sinister way by means of heavy iron 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:59.080 chains and padlocks. According to a gruesome fashion of a 0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:02.160 half a century ago, the abode of the race whose 0:05:02.200 --> 0:05:06.080 scions are inurned had once crowned the declivity which holds 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:09.039 the tomb, but had long since fallen victims to the 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:12.520 flames which sprang up from a disastrous stroke of lightning 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:20.240 of the midnight storm which destroyed this gloomy mansion. The 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:24.000 older inhabitants of the region sometimes speak and hushed and 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:28.599 uneasy voices alluding to what they call divine wrath, in 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:31.560 a manner that, in later years vaguely increased the always 0:05:31.600 --> 0:05:36.000 strong fascination which I felt for the forest darkened sepulcher. 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:40.080 One man only had perished in the fire when the 0:05:40.160 --> 0:05:42.240 last of the hides was buried. In this place of 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:45.920 shade and stillness. The sad urnful of ashes had come 0:05:45.960 --> 0:05:49.159 from a distant land to which the family had repaired. 0:05:49.200 --> 0:05:52.400 When the mansion burned down. No one remains to lay 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:55.600 flowers before the granite portal, and few care to brave 0:05:55.680 --> 0:05:58.960 the depressing shadows which seem to linger strangely about the 0:05:58.960 --> 0:06:02.240 water worn stone. I shall never forget the afternoon when 0:06:02.240 --> 0:06:04.680 I first stumbled upon the half hidden House of the Dead. 0:06:05.320 --> 0:06:08.720 It was in midsummer, when the alchemy of nature transmutes 0:06:08.760 --> 0:06:12.719 the Sylvan landscape to one vivid and almost homogeneous mass 0:06:12.720 --> 0:06:16.839 of green. When the senses are well nigh intoxicated with 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:22.800 the surging seas of moist verdure and the subtly indefinable 0:06:22.839 --> 0:06:27.080 odors of the soil and the vegetation in such surroundings, 0:06:27.080 --> 0:06:30.400 the mind loses its perspective. Time and space become trivial 0:06:30.440 --> 0:06:34.400 and unreal, and echoes of a forgotten, prehistoric pass beat 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:38.280 insistently upon the enthralled consciousness. All day I had been 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:41.000 wandering through the mystic groves of the Hollow, thinking thoughts 0:06:41.040 --> 0:06:44.159 I need not discuss, and conversing with things I need 0:06:44.160 --> 0:06:47.920 not name. In years a child of ten, I had 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:50.839 seen and heard many wonders unknown to the throng, and 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:54.680 was oddly aged in certain respects. When, upon forcing my 0:06:54.720 --> 0:06:58.240 way between two savage clumps of briars, I suddenly encountered 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:00.599 the entrance of the vault. I had no knowledge of 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:03.760 what I had discovered. The dark blocks of granite, the 0:07:03.839 --> 0:07:07.279 door so curiously ajar, and the funeral carvings above the 0:07:07.400 --> 0:07:11.680 arch aroused in me. No associations of mournful or terrible 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:15.320 character of graves and tombs. I knew and imagined much, 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:18.960 but had, on account of my peculiar temperament, been kept 0:07:19.000 --> 0:07:24.160 from all personal contact with churchyards and cemeteries. The strange 0:07:24.160 --> 0:07:26.760 stone house on the Woodland slope was to me only 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:30.320 a source of interest and speculation, and its cold, damp 0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:33.040 interior into which I vainly peered through the aperture so 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:37.680 tantalizingly left, contained for me no hint of death or decay. 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:41.280 But in that instant of curiosity was borne the madly 0:07:41.840 --> 0:07:45.000 unreasoning desire which has brought me to this hell of confinement. 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:48.440 Spurred on by a voice which must have come from 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:51.360 the hideous soul of the forest, I resolved to enter 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:54.200 the beckoning gloom in spite of the ponderous change which 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:57.680 barred my passage in the waning light of day, I 0:07:57.760 --> 0:08:01.080 alternately rattled the rusty impediments with a view to throwing 0:08:01.160 --> 0:08:04.600 wide the stone door, an essay to squeeze my slight 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:08.240 form through the space already provided. But neither plan met 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:11.880 with success. At first curious, I was not frantic, and 0:08:11.960 --> 0:08:14.280 when in the thickening twilight I returned to my home, 0:08:14.800 --> 0:08:17.120 I had sworn to the hundred gods of the grove 0:08:17.240 --> 0:08:20.720 that at any cost I would someday force an entrance 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:24.320 to the black, chilly depths that seemed calling out to me. 0:08:25.440 --> 0:08:27.840 The physician with the iron gray beard who comes each 0:08:27.880 --> 0:08:30.840 day to my room once told a visitor that this 0:08:30.920 --> 0:08:35.360 decision marked the beginnings of a pitiful monomania. But I 0:08:35.400 --> 0:08:37.760 will leave final judgment to my readers when they shall 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:38.520 have learnt all. 0:08:39.920 --> 0:08:43.280 So, basically where we're at right, Chuck, is that we 0:08:43.360 --> 0:08:46.679 have a little weirdo kid who discovered a family tomb 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:49.760 that's been abandoned, yes in a grove. Tried to get in, 0:08:50.720 --> 0:08:53.800 and he realized that he can't because he's too puny. 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:56.400 Yet he's drawn to it so much like his ex caliber. 0:08:56.559 --> 0:08:59.440 Getting into this tomb is like something he's sworn to do. 0:08:59.520 --> 0:09:02.200 Eventually sounds like it, but we find that he is 0:09:02.440 --> 0:09:04.600 in an asylum. 0:09:05.240 --> 0:09:07.200 Well, little Jervis Dudley, Little. 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:09.480 Jervis Dudley, I'm going to take over now. Okay, okay. 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:13.680 The months following my discovery were spent in feudal attempts 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:16.880 to force the complicated padlock of the slightly open vault, 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:20.440 and in carefully guarded inquiries regarding the nature and history 0:09:20.440 --> 0:09:23.880 of the structure. With the traditionally receptive ears of the 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:28.280 small boy, I learned much, though an habitual secretiveness caused 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:31.000 me to tell no one of my information or my resolve. 0:09:31.640 --> 0:09:33.680 It is perhaps worth mentioning that I was not at 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:37.160 all surprised or terrified on learning the nature of the vault. 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:40.720 My rather original ideas regarding life and death had caused 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:43.320 me to associate the cold clay with the breathing body 0:09:43.320 --> 0:09:45.920 in a vague fashion, and I felt that the sinister 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:48.560 family of the burned down mansion was in some way 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:52.880 represented within the stone space I sought to explore. Mumbled 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:56.000 tales of the weird rights and godless revels of bygone 0:09:56.080 --> 0:09:58.480 years in the ancient hall gave to me a new 0:09:58.480 --> 0:10:01.440 and potent interest in the tomb, before whose doors I 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:03.840 would sit for long hours at a time each day. 0:10:04.600 --> 0:10:07.880 Once I thrust a candle within the nearly closed entrance, 0:10:08.200 --> 0:10:10.640 but could see nothing save a flight of damp stone 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:14.280 steps leading downward. The odor of the place repelled yet 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:17.400 bewitched me. I felt I had known it before, in 0:10:17.400 --> 0:10:21.280 a past remote beyond all recollection, beyond even my tendency 0:10:21.280 --> 0:10:24.600 of the body I now possess. The year after I 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:27.319 first beheld the tomb, I stumbled upon a worm eaten 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:30.920 translation of Plutarch's lives in the book filled attic of 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:33.920 my home. Reading the Life of Theseus, I was much 0:10:33.960 --> 0:10:37.040 impressed by that passage telling of the great stone beneath 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:40.000 which the boyish hero was to find his tokens of 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:42.760 destiny whenever he should become old enough to lift its 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:46.360 enormous weight. This legend had the effect of dispelling my 0:10:46.480 --> 0:10:49.360 keenest impatience to enter the vault, for it made me 0:10:49.440 --> 0:10:52.160 feel that the time was not yet ripe. Later, I 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:55.320 told myself I should grow to a strength and ingenuity 0:10:55.520 --> 0:10:58.520 which might enable me to unfasten the heavily chained door 0:10:58.600 --> 0:11:01.439 with ease. But until till then, I would do better 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:05.720 by conforming to what seemed the will of fate. Accordingly, 0:11:05.760 --> 0:11:09.240 my watches by the dank portal became less persistent, and 0:11:09.360 --> 0:11:12.160 much of my time was spent in other, though equally 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:16.120 strange pursuits. I would sometimes rise very quietly in the night, 0:11:16.440 --> 0:11:18.920 stealing out to walk in those churchyards and places of 0:11:18.960 --> 0:11:21.960 burial from which I had been kept by my parents. 0:11:22.280 --> 0:11:24.800 What I did there I may not say, for I 0:11:24.840 --> 0:11:27.240 am not now sure of the reality of certain things. 0:11:27.600 --> 0:11:29.640 But I know that on the day after such a 0:11:29.720 --> 0:11:33.120 nocturnal ramble I would often astonish those about me with 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:35.920 my knowledge of topics almost forgotten. 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:36.599 For many generations. 0:11:37.080 --> 0:11:39.120 It was after a night like this that I shocked 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:41.720 the community with a queer conceit about the burial of 0:11:41.760 --> 0:11:45.160 the rich and celebrated Squire Brewster, a maker of local 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:48.319 history who was interred in seventeen eleven, and whose slate 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:52.680 headstone bearing a graven skull and crossbones, was slowly crumbling 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:56.079 to powder. In a moment of childish imagination, I vowed 0:11:56.120 --> 0:11:59.600 not only that the undertaker, Goodman Simpson, had stolen the 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:03.400 silver buckled shoes, silken hose, and satin small clothes of 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:06.960 the deceased before burial, but that the Squire himself not 0:12:07.200 --> 0:12:11.000 fully inanimate, had turned twice in his mound covered coffin 0:12:11.240 --> 0:12:15.760 on the day of internment, So what's going on here? 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:22.480 So basically, the kid is resolved, like theseus, that his 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:24.959 destiny still awaits him. He's not ready for it yet, 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:28.679 so instead he's kind of going around, hanging around churchyard's 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:34.120 burial places, and he's coming back the next day with 0:12:34.240 --> 0:12:38.199 weird knowledge, Chuck like knowledge. No living human should. 0:12:37.880 --> 0:12:40.679 Have knowledge that Jervis Dudley surely should not have. 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:43.280 Right, Chuck, have you taken over again? 0:12:43.760 --> 0:12:47.200 I'd like to, Okay, okay, but the idea of entering 0:12:47.240 --> 0:12:51.959 the tomb never left my thoughts. Josh being indeed simulated 0:12:52.000 --> 0:12:56.559 by the unexpected genealogical discover that my own maternal ancestry 0:12:56.559 --> 0:12:59.880 possessed at least a slight link with a supposedly extra 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:03.640 family of the hides. Last of my paternal race, I was, 0:13:03.760 --> 0:13:06.520 likewise the last of this older and more mysterious line. 0:13:06.880 --> 0:13:10.360 I began to feel that the tomb was mine, and 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:13.559 to look forward with hot eagerness to the time when 0:13:13.559 --> 0:13:16.400 I might pass within the stone door and down those 0:13:16.440 --> 0:13:20.439 slimy stone steps into the dark. I now formed the 0:13:20.480 --> 0:13:24.280 habit of listening very intently at the slightly open portal, 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:28.560 choosing my favorite hours of midnight stillness for the odd vigil. 0:13:29.360 --> 0:13:31.400 By the time I came of age, I had made 0:13:31.400 --> 0:13:34.800 a small clearing in the thicket before the mold stained 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:38.880 facade of the hillside, allowing the surrounding vegetation to encircle 0:13:38.920 --> 0:13:42.280 and overhang the space like the walls and roof of 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:47.800 Sylvan Bower. This bower was my temple Josh, the fastened 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:51.080 door my shrine, and here I would lie outstretched on 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:55.000 the mossy ground, thinking strange thoughts and dreaming of strange dreams. 0:13:55.920 --> 0:13:58.480 The night of the First Revelation was a sultry one. 0:13:58.920 --> 0:14:01.320 I must have fallen asleep from fatigue, for it was 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:03.960 with a distinct sense of awakening that I heard the 0:14:04.040 --> 0:14:08.320 voices of those tones and accents. I hesitate to speak 0:14:08.559 --> 0:14:12.199 of their quality. I will not speak, but I may 0:14:12.280 --> 0:14:16.920 say that they presented certain uncanny differences in vocabulary, pronunciation, 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:20.680 of mode, and utterance. Every shade of the New England dialect, 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:23.960 from the uncouth syllables of the Puritan colonists to the 0:14:24.000 --> 0:14:27.320 precise rhetoric of fifty years ago, seemed represented in that 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:30.600 shadowy colloquy, though it was only later that I noticed 0:14:30.640 --> 0:14:34.320 the fact. At the time, indeed, my attention was distracted 0:14:34.320 --> 0:14:38.080 from this matter by another phenomenon, a phenomenon so fleeting 0:14:38.120 --> 0:14:41.080 that I could not take oath upon its reality. I 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:44.600 barely fancied that as I awoke, a light had been 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:49.440 hurriedly extinguished within the sunken sepulcher. I do not think 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:52.640 I was either astounded or panic stricken, but I know 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:56.120 that I was greatly and permanently changed. That night, upon 0:14:56.200 --> 0:14:59.240 returning home, I went with much directness to a rotting 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:01.840 chest in the attic, wherein I found the key, which 0:15:01.880 --> 0:15:05.080 next day unlocked with ease the barrier I had so 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:08.880 long stormed in vain. The dude has a key in 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:11.360 his attic to this tomb, and he went directly to it. 0:15:11.960 --> 0:15:14.120 After this big nut. 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:16.680 Is his heat up. It was in the soft glow 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:19.120 of the late afternoon that I first entered the vault 0:15:19.240 --> 0:15:22.320 on the abandoned slope. A spell was upon me, and 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:26.440 my heart leaped with an exultation I can but ill describe. 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:29.080 As I closed the door behind me and descended the 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:32.400 dripping steps by the light of my lone candle, I 0:15:32.400 --> 0:15:35.040 seemed to know the way, and though the candle sputtered 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:39.160 with the stifling reek of the place, I felt singularly 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:43.360 at home in the musty charnel house air. Looking about me, 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:46.800 I beheld many marble slabs bearing coffins, or the remains 0:15:46.800 --> 0:15:49.640 of coffins. Some of these were sealed and intact, but 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:53.040 others had nearly vanished, leaving the silver handles and plates 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:57.120 isolated amidst certain curious heaps of whitish dust. Upon one 0:15:57.120 --> 0:16:01.000 plate I read the name Sir Jeffrey Hyde, who had 0:16:01.000 --> 0:16:03.400 come from Sussex in sixteen forty and died here a 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:07.040 few years later. And a conspicuous alcove was one fairly 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:10.720 well preserved and untenanted casket, adorned with a single name, 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:13.240 which brought to me both a smile and a shudder. 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:17.280 An odd impulse caused me to climb upon the broad slab, 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:21.080 extinguish my candle, and lie down within the vacant box. 0:16:27.480 --> 0:16:29.560 So this guy is totally off his night at this point, 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:33.920 he's lying down in a coffin in the tune. 0:16:34.040 --> 0:16:35.760 In the gray light of dawn, I staggered from the 0:16:35.800 --> 0:16:37.640 vault and locked the chain of the door behind me. 0:16:38.000 --> 0:16:40.440 I was no longer a young man, though, but twenty 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:44.200 one winters had chilled my bodily frame. Early rising villagers 0:16:44.200 --> 0:16:47.840 who observed my homeward progress looked at me strangely and 0:16:47.960 --> 0:16:51.600 marveled at the signs of ribald revelry, which they saw 0:16:51.640 --> 0:16:54.200 in one whose life was known to be a sober 0:16:54.240 --> 0:16:58.360 and solitary one. I did not appear before my parents 0:16:58.400 --> 0:17:00.320 till after a long and refreshing sleap. 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:05.280 You're good at this, Chuck, Thanks, you're good. 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:08.480 So you get what's going on here? Right? Yeah? 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:10.280 I think audible dot Com was gonna be calling us 0:17:10.280 --> 0:17:10.960 any minute. 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:12.000 Now and say please stop. 0:17:12.560 --> 0:17:16.399 Yeah, we'll sue you, all right, Chuck, you ready? So 0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:18.199 what's going on? Is this kid is lying down in 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:20.840 this tomb. He leaves the tomb. Is he older now? 0:17:21.520 --> 0:17:22.400 He's twenty one? Now? 0:17:22.440 --> 0:17:24.640 Remember he first found the tomb at age ten ten, 0:17:25.320 --> 0:17:29.520 couldn't open it, resolved to figure out, you know, basically 0:17:29.560 --> 0:17:31.959 just turned into a weirdo in other ways. And then finally, 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:37.720 when he's twenty one, he sees a light in this place. Yeah, 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:40.040 one night is changed. When he wakes up, he goes 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:43.520 directly to his own attic, his own attic finds the key, 0:17:43.720 --> 0:17:44.600 finds the key. 0:17:44.560 --> 0:17:48.280 Gets in, lays down in the coffin, pretty new coffin. 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:51.399 Wakes up the next day, stumbles back home in the 0:17:51.400 --> 0:17:53.840 morning and it looks like he'd been partying all night. 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:55.360 Yeah, and people are looking at him like he's weird, 0:17:55.359 --> 0:17:57.280 which I can't figure out. This all seems very normal 0:17:57.320 --> 0:17:57.520 to me. 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:03.520 All right, you ready, May I please do? Henceforward? I 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:07.320 haunted the tomb each night, seeing, hearing, and doing things 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:12.800 I must never reveal. My speech, always susceptible to environmental influences, 0:18:13.160 --> 0:18:15.600 was the first thing to succumb to the change. He 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:18.560 must have a thick tongue too, and my suddenly acquired 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:22.639 archaism of diction was soon remarked upon. Later, a queer 0:18:22.640 --> 0:18:26.480 boldness and recklessness came into my demeanor, till I unconsciously 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:28.919 grew to possess the bearing of a man of the world. 0:18:29.000 --> 0:18:33.400 Despite my lifelong seclusion. My former silent tongue waxed voluble 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:36.200 with the easy grace of a Chesterfield, with a godless 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:39.440 cynicism of a Rochester. I know you get that, Chuck. 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:45.160 I displayed a peculiar erudition, utterly unlike the fantastic Monkish 0:18:45.200 --> 0:18:47.520 lore over which I had poured in my youth, and 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:50.480 covered the fly leaves of my books with facile, impromptu 0:18:50.600 --> 0:18:54.399 epigrams which brought up suggestions of gay prior and the 0:18:54.440 --> 0:18:58.920 sprightliest of Augustine wits and rhymsters. One morning at breakfast, 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:03.760 I came close to de z by declaiming impalpably licorice accents, 0:19:04.000 --> 0:19:07.520 an effusion of eighteenth century Bacchanalian mirth, a bit of 0:19:07.600 --> 0:19:11.080 Georgian playfulness never recorded in a book. So basically what 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:13.360 he's saying is he sounds like he's drunk in the mornings, 0:19:13.400 --> 0:19:18.439 even though he's like a very sober, solitary, kind of 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:23.080 a reclusive kid, but he's starting to kind of change 0:19:23.119 --> 0:19:24.720 into a party boy. 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:26.000 Nice. 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:29.199 Now here, there's a few passages that we're not going 0:19:29.280 --> 0:19:30.600 to read. We're gonna skip over these. 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:32.800 Okay, yeah, the poetry. 0:19:32.880 --> 0:19:37.480 We're actually editing Lovecraft right now. Yeah, about this time 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:41.480 I conceived my present fear of fire and thunderstorms. Previously 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:44.800 indifferent to such things, I had now an unspeakable horror 0:19:44.880 --> 0:19:47.560 of them, and would retire to the innermost recesses of 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:52.320 the house whenever the heavens threaten an electrical display. Yes, 0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:54.800 a favorite haun of mine during the day was the 0:19:54.920 --> 0:19:57.879 ruined cellar of the mansion that had burned down. Remember that, 0:19:58.320 --> 0:20:02.399 Oh yeah, that's above the tomb, and in fancy I 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:05.719 would picture the structure as it had been in its prime. 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:09.160 On one occasion, I startled a villager by leading him 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:12.399 confidently to a shallow sub seller, of whose existence I 0:20:12.440 --> 0:20:14.600 seemed to know, in spite of the fact that it 0:20:14.640 --> 0:20:19.240 had been unseen and forgotten for many generations. At last 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:22.320 came that which I had long feared. My parents, alarmed 0:20:22.359 --> 0:20:24.720 at the altered manner and appearance of their only son, 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:28.720 commenced to exert over my movements, a kindly espionage which 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:32.000 threatened to result in disaster. I had told no one 0:20:32.040 --> 0:20:34.600 of my visits to the tomb, having guarded my secret 0:20:34.600 --> 0:20:38.000 purpose with religious zeals since childhood. But now I was 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:40.520 forced to exercise care in threading the mazes of the 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:43.760 wooded hollow, that I might throw off a possible pursuer. 0:20:44.520 --> 0:20:46.520 My key to the vault I kept suspended from a 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:49.159 cord about my neck, its presence known only to me. 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:52.159 I never carried out of the sepulcher any of the 0:20:52.200 --> 0:20:55.919 things I came upon whilst within its walls. I like 0:20:55.960 --> 0:20:58.440 that word, sepulcher. You've got twice, that was my first one. 0:20:58.720 --> 0:20:59.640 So what's going on here? 0:21:00.359 --> 0:21:00.600 Kids? 0:21:00.680 --> 0:21:02.119 Fraid of lightning and thunder? 0:21:02.720 --> 0:21:06.600 Remember that house? Yeah, this cellar of which he's visiting 0:21:07.040 --> 0:21:10.159 was struck by lightning and burned out and one person 0:21:10.320 --> 0:21:13.639 perished in it. And this is in the eighteenth century. 0:21:13.720 --> 0:21:16.280 I think, yeah, long before this kid's running around, because 0:21:16.320 --> 0:21:18.680 this was supposed to be contemporary in like the nineteen twenties. 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:23.840 Right, okay, okay, Cherry's in there laughing. You ready my turn? 0:21:23.920 --> 0:21:24.560 I'm ready, Bud. 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:27.479 One morning, as I emerged from the damp tomb and 0:21:27.520 --> 0:21:30.400 fastened the chain of the portal with no too steady hand, 0:21:30.880 --> 0:21:34.280 I beheld an adjacent thicket the dreaded face of a watcher. 0:21:35.320 --> 0:21:36.159 See that's creepy. 0:21:36.560 --> 0:21:36.840 Damn. 0:21:37.200 --> 0:21:39.760 Surely the end was near, for my bower was discovered 0:21:39.800 --> 0:21:42.879 and the objective of my nocturnal journey is revealed. The 0:21:42.960 --> 0:21:45.719 man did not accost me, so I hastened home in 0:21:45.720 --> 0:21:47.840 an effort to overhear what he might report to my 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:51.760 care worn father. Were my sojourns beyond the chain door 0:21:51.800 --> 0:21:55.320 about to be proclaimed to the world imagine my delighted 0:21:55.320 --> 0:21:58.840 astonishment on hearing the spy inform my parents in cautious 0:21:58.840 --> 0:22:01.480