Episode 6 - A cursed bed and a vanishing into thin air in broad daylight

Speaker A: 00:00:03

Imagine a world teetering on the edge of the familiar, a place where the fabric of the everyday begins to unravel, revealing glimpses of the extraordinary lurking beneath.

You're about to embark on a journey into the enigmatic, where the peculiar and the perplexing intertwine, where every tale twists the mind and tugs at the spirit. It's a descent into the strange, the mysterious and and the unexplained. This is when reality frays.

New episodes are published every Monday and Thursday, and when Reality Phrase is available everywhere, find podcasts are found. Before we move on, please hit that Follow or Subscribe button and turn on all reminders so you are alerted when new episodes are released.

Today's episode contains two stories. First up is the Whispering Wood, a warning that even the most innocuous of objects can carry a curse.

And the second story of the day is the Hollow Field, about the impossible vanishing of a man in broad daylight. Now let's get to the stories. The Miller family, Tom, Ellen, Jacob and Sara. Ordinary folk seeking refuge in the quiet embrace of Horicon, Wisconsin.

A new home, a fresh start, and a bargain too good to pass up. A set of oak bunk beds carved from the past and polished with promise.

But in the grain of that wood lies a secret older than the town itself, whispering through the slats, waiting for a family to claim. Let's unlock a door not to a house on Larrabee street, but to a place where the familiar turns feral, where the things we own begin to own us.

Welcome to that place where reality frays. This is the story of the whispering wood.

consin, in the fading days of: 1986

Tom Miller, 34, was a lean mechanic with calloused hands and a quiet grit, his hazel eyes creased from years of squinting in engine bays. Ellen, 32, carried a softer strength. Her auburn hair was tied back as she unpacked boxes, her voice lilting with hope for a fresh start.

Their kids, Jacob, 8, with a tangle of brown curls and a stubborn streak that matched his father's. And Sarah, six, slight and watchful, her hazel eyes mirroring her mother's, trudged through the move with a sullenness of uprooting kids.

They'd left Oshkosh behind a city of familiar streets and a backyard tire swing for this squat ranch house on Larrabee Street. They'd bought it cheap from a farmer named Purvis Pritchard, who had traded it for a trailer after his wife's death.

The house was a patchwork of promise and neglect, peeling paint, a sagging front porch, and a basement that exhaled the scent of damp earth and mist mildew. Through its cracked concrete walls, Tom saw a project, a chance to build something stable.

Ellen envisioned a garden, outback hollyhocks and marigolds to rival her mother's prized beds in Fond du Lac. By Christmas they'd settled in the living room, warmed by a secondhand couch and a wood stove Tom rigged himself.

. On a bitter February day in: 1987

There, amid chipped china and moth eaten coats, stood a set of oak bunk beds, sturdy hand carved, their varnish catching the glow of a bare bulb. Amos Hank, the shopkeeper, was a stooped figure with a tobacco stained beard and a voice like a rusted hinge.

Came from an estate sale up near Fond du Lac, he said, running a gnarled hand along the frame. Old farm stuff. Good oak. Solid as they come.

Tom, always hunting a deal, handed over 80 bucks, wrestled the disassembled slats and rails into his truck, and drove home through a swirl of snow. That night he and Ellen pieced the beds together in the basement.

The kids scampered around Jacob, testing the ladder's rungs, while Sarah giggled and clutched her stuffed rabbit. Mr. Whiskers.

The bunks stayed downstairs through the thaw of March and April, the basement their temporary home, while Ellen scrubbed the upstairs room, queen of years of grime by May, with the walls painted a cheery yellow and the windows thrown open to spring air, Tom hauled the beds up the narrow staircase, their weight gouging the pine steps. Jacob claimed the top bunk with a triumphant leap, declaring it his pirate ship, while Sara settled below, her rabbit tucked under her chin.

Ellen smoothed their blankets. No more moving, she said. This is home. The first night was unremarkable.

Jacob's whispered tales of Blackbeard faded into snores, a counterpoint to Sarah's soft breathing below. But at breakfast, Jacob slunk into the kitchen, pale beneath his freckles. The radio turned on.

Last night, he replied when Ellen asked if he felt okay by itself. Kept flipping, turn, talk, then music, then static, loud and soft, like someone was messing with it.

Sarah said nothing, her spoon tracing slow circles in her oatmeal, her eyes darting to the hallway. Tom frowned and trudged upstairs to check the Zenith clock radio, a relic from Ellen's parents with a dial that stuck.

The plug was snug, the power switch off. Finding no immediate explanation, he yanked the cord from the outlet.

Three nights later, Ellen found Sarah trembling by the bedroom door, her nightgown twisted, her bare feet cold against the floorboards. There's a lady, she whispered, barely audible over the hum of crickets. She's got red eyes and stands by the bunks. She doesn't talk, just looks at me.

Ellen's chest tightened and she knelt, brushing Sarah's hair back. A nightmare, baby. Jacob's pirate stories are getting to you.

She coaxed her back to bed, but as she flicked off the light, a faint tapping, like fingernails on wood, echoed from the bunks. She paused, heart thudding, then switched the lights back on. Jacob was sprawled asleep. Sarah's rabbit peeked from the covers.

The tapping was gone, but the air hung heavy and humid, like a storm trapped indoors. June rolled in with sticky heat, and the house grew restless. Doors slammed shut on still days, as if shoved by unseen hands.

The kitchen radio, a sleek Panasonic Tom had splurged on at Sears, crackled to life at odd hours, spitting static and snatches of gospel hymns or farm reports before cutting out. Jacob swore he saw the bunk ladder tremble one night, its rungs quivering like a plucked string.

Though Sarah slept below, her breathing steady, Ellen began finding marks on the kids arms thin red lines too neat for playtime scrapes, and the kids couldn't explain how they had happened. By July, the unease was a palpable thing in the house.

Ellen's sewing machine gathered dust, her hands too shaky to thread a needle, and the garden plot out back was a tangle of weeds. Tom began sleeping on the kid's floor. A sleeping bag unrolled beside a Louisville Slugger he'd dug out of the basement.

He couldn't say what he'd swing at, just that the house felt wrong. One muggy night he jolted awake to a fog seeping across the room, gray, cold, curling like smoke from the bunk's base.

A voice rasped through it, low and guttural, speaking a language Tom had never heard before. It wasn't human, more like wind through a broken pipe, sharp with menace. He stumbled out, one frightened child beneath each arm.

Ellen was in the kitchen, her face drained. I heard it, too, she whispered from the walls. Like it's inside. The next Morning they called Priest Dan Erickson from St. Stephen's.

A stocky man in his 50s with wire rimmed glasses, he arrived with a worn Bible, a vial of holy water, and a calm that felt out of place. Tom and Ellen escorted him to the kids room but remained in the hall. Neither cared to enter.

The air thickened as Dan read from Psalms, his words steady and strong. He sprinkled holy water on the bunks, and the wood hissed a soft, angry sizzle while the droplets beaded up, refusing to soak in.

A faint scorch mark bloomed on the top slat, like a burn from a cigarette. Dan's brow furrowed, his glasses fogging slightly. There's something here, he said, snapping his Bible shut. Something old and mad.

Those beds, I'd burn em if I were you. August stretched the family thin. Tom picked up double shifts, his hands trembling as he tightened bolts.

Ellen stopped leaving the house, her world shrinking to the kids and the walls that seemed to watch her. Jacob grew sullen, snapping at Sarah when she clung too close. Sarah stopped talking, her eyes always wide and wary.

In mid August, with Tom gone until dawn, Ellen's brother Mike offered to stay over. He was a burly trucker with a laugh like a foghorn and a disdain for spooky nonsense.

He sprawled on the couch with a Miller High life, teasing Jacob about his pirate obsession until midnight struck. A scream tore from the kids room, Sarah's high and raw. Mike bolted in and froze.

A figure loomed by the monks, tall, shadowy, its edges flickering like heat off asphalt. Its eyes glowed red, twin embers in a face that wasn't there. Sarah huddled on the floor, sobbing, her blanket tangled around her. Get out.

Mike roared, lunging with fists raised, but the shape melted into the wall, leaving a scorch mark on the plaster, a jagged smear that stunk of sulfur. He grabbed the kids, shouting for Ellen, and they piled into his truck, tires squealing as they peeled out.

The house's lights pulsed behind them, flickering like a taunting heartbeat. They went to Ellen's sister Linda's home in Beaver Dam, a cramped one bedroom 20 miles west.

Linda, a nurse with a smoker's rasp, brewed coffee and listened as Mike recounted the night. It wasn't human, he said, hands shaking as he lit a camel like fire, and shadow mashed together those eyes. Jesus.

The kids slept fitfully on a pullout couch, Sarah whispering about the lady, Jacob clutching a flashlight he refused to turn off. Ellen stared out Linda's kitchen window, struggling to breathe.

Tom arrived home at 6am to find the house silent, the air thick with unnatural dampness. He'd had enough with a can of kerosene from the garage, a box of matches, and a fury born of a protective father. He dragged the bunk beds outside.

Their weight gouged the lawn into muddy scars. Neighbors peeked through their curtains as he doused the wood, the fumes stinging his nose.

He struck the match and the flames roared, fierce and unnatural, tinged with a sickly green that clawed at the sky. In the smoke he swore he saw a figure, tall and eyeless, its mouth a gaping slash, writhing as the fire consumed the beds.

The heat drove him back, singeing his eyebrows, but he didn't move another step until the figure was gone and the wood crumbled to ash.

He shoveled the black, powdery remains into a trash bin and hauled it to the county landfill, dumping it where the bulldozers would bury it deep under red clay. Ellen, Sarah, and Jacob never returned to the house. Tom sold it in September to a young couple from Milwaukee and moved his family back to Oshkosh.

In: 1995

Those beds came from the Dietrich place near Fond du Lac, she said, voice a dry whisper. Lydia Dietrich died there in 22, alone, raving about voices in the trees. Her husband, Carl was a carpenter, built him from an oak on their land.

Big twisted thing. Lightning hit it three times before he took it down. Folks called it cursed, said it screamed when the saw bit in. Carl didn't care.

Kept working till Lydia lost her mind. Amos never liked selling those beds. Said they felt heavy, wrong, like they carried something. She paused, eyes distant.

And he burned the papers after you folks bought em. Didn't want them traced back.

The Miller family has fled, their homes sold, their nightmare reduced to cinders and buried beneath the weight of progress. The bunk beds, those silent sentinels of oak, are gone, consigned to the landfill of memory where the earth swallows what man cannot explain.

But listen closely past the hum of machinery and the rustle of leaves and you might hear it still, an insistent patient tapping, a reminder that some things cannot be burned away when reality frays. Today's second story is the hollow field.

a, on a hot July afternoon in: 1854

He's a man tethered to the ordinary, to the soil beneath his feet, to the predictable rhythm of a life well understood. But with a single step he is about to defy the physical laws we know and enter the world of afraid reality.

This is the story of the hollow Field the sun hung hot and heavy in the sky over the Williamson farm. It burned like a molten disk, bleeding golden fire onto 32 year old Orion Williamson's back as he toiled in his field.

Pausing in his labors, he stood straight, removing his work stained hat with a heavily calloused hand. Sparing a glance at the inferno above, he sighed, mopped sweat from his face with a brightly colored rag, and clamped the hat back into place.

Before resuming work, he surveyed the field. It stretched around him, a sea of green rippling under a faint breeze that did nothing to mitigate the oppressive humidity of an Alabama summer.

Visible in the distance were the dark shapes of his hogs rooting near the oaks that framed his property. Orion was a family man, taciturn, sturdy, and as rooted in the land as the trees.

His wife, Eliza, watched from the porch, her apron dusted with flour while their son Thomas chased a grasshopper at her feet. Eliza called out that supper would be ready soon, receiving an acknowledging wave and smile from Orion, which she returned.

On a dirt road that bordered the field, a horse drawn buggy slowly rattled along, its wheels kicking up dust.

Armor Wren, a broad shouldered man with a graying beard, and his teenage son James were aboard, returning from town with a load of supplies for their neighboring farm. Both waved at Orion and Armor tipped his hat in Eliza's direction. Orion returned the friendly greeting and turned to check the hogs.

They loved the acorns that littered the ground beneath the massive oaks, and he'd already repaired the fence twice after they'd torn through to reach the untouched buffet on the far side. He grunted, knowing he had to bring them back to the barn or they'd break out again and he'd spend half the night chasing them all over the county.

Orion began walking across the field with long, determined strides, but he never reached the hogs. Eliza saw it happen. One heartbeat he was there, boots scuffing the grass, shoulders squared. Then he wasn't. No stumble, no cry, no bore of motion.

Just gone. Her scream split the air, sharp and raw, freezing. Thomas mid hop, his small face crumpling in confusion.

Armor yanked the reins, the horse snorting as the buggy lurched to a stop. James leapt to his feet in the buggy, his eyes wide, scanning the field. Where'd he go? Armor shouted.

Scrambling down, the four of them converged on the spot, a patch of green no different from the rest, save for a faint flattening where Orion's boots had pressed moments before. Armor kicked at the earth, expecting a hole, a trapdoor, something. But nothing.

James dropped to his knees, tentatively touching the ground as he looked around in disbelief. Where is he? James muttered breathlessly. Eliza's voice trembled. I saw him vanish. Like. Like the air took him.

Armor straightened, eyes wide with barely contained fear. That ain't possible. Men don't just disappear. But they had all seen it. Orion Williamson was gone, and the field lay silent as if mocking them.

Word spread fast in Selma, carried on whispers and hurried footsteps. By dusk, the farm buzzed with neighbors. Men with lanterns and shovels tramped across the field, their shadows stretching long and thin.

Women clustered on the porch, murmuring prayers, while children peeked from behind skirts, half thrilled and half terrified. Judge James J. McBride arrived last, his black coat pristine despite the heat of the night, a notebook tucked under his arm.

He was a lean man, sharp eyed and methodical, known for settling land disputes with a cool head. Tell me exactly what you saw, Mrs. Williamson, he said, pencil poised. Eliza's hands twisted in her apron. He was walking right there. She pointed.

And then he wasn't. No sound, no Nothing. Just gone. McBride frowned and glanced at Armor. And you? Same as her, armor said gruffly. Me and James was passing by.

Saw him clear as day. Then he just weren't there. Ain't no hole, no ditch. We looked. James nodded, his voice quiet with fear. It's like he melted away, sir.

McBride paced the spot, tapping his boot against the ground. It thudded solid. He scribbled notes, his brow furrowing deeper with each line. No sign of a struggle. No footprints running off.

Nothing, eliza whispered. Just his steps. Then nothing. The judge called for a broader search. Men dug trenches, probed with poles, and shouted Orion's name into the twilight.

A pair of bloodhounds arrived that their handler tugging at their leashes. The dogs sniffed the flattened grass, circled once, then sat whining softly, their tails tucked. The handler cursed under his breath.

Never seen em act like this, he said. By midnight, exhaustion had set in. The crowd thinned, leaving only a few stragglers in the Williamson family.

Eliza sat on the porch steps, Thomas asleep in her lap, her eyes fixed on the field. Armor lingered nearby, his hat crumpled in his hands. You think he's dead? She asked quietly. Armor hesitated. I don't know what to think, Eliza.

This ain't natural. The next morning, Selma buzzed at the General store men swapped tails over tobacco and coffee. Bandits, one said, snatched him quick and quiet.

Another scoffed in broad daylight with witnesses. A third, a wiry preacher, leaned in close. It's the Lord's work. A rapture, maybe. Or a judgment. Maybe it's Judgment Day coming for all of us.

Back at the farm, Eliza stayed by the field, her gaze hollow. Around noon, she stiffened, her head tilting as if listening. Thomas, she said sharply. Do you hear that? The boy rubbed his eyes. Hear what, Ma?

She ran into the field. It's Orion. He's calling me.

Thomas followed, watching, wide eyed as she stopped at the spot where his father had vanished and pressed her ear to the ground. I hear Daddy, too. Thomas shouted. They both tore at the field with their bare hands. Orion. She shouted, cawing frantically at the dirt.

Eliza and Thomas dug until their fingernails split and hands bled. Neighbors rushed over, pulling them back, but Eliza fought, sobbing. McBride arrived, summoned by a concerned neighbor.

He listened as Eliza recounted the voice, her desperation palpable. He knelt, pressing his own ear to the earth. Silence. He stood, brushing off his knees, his expression unreadable. Coulda been the wind, he said gently.

Or your grief playing tricks. It's him, she insisted. I know it. That night she slept in the field, a blanket draped over her shoulders. Thomas curled beside her.

Days turned to weeks and the search dwindled. McBride hired a geologist from Montgomery, a bespectacled man named Dr. Henry Voss, to examine the site.

Voss arrived with tools and a skeptical smirk, muttering about sinkholes in limestone caves. He drilled, measured, and tested the soil, his smirk fading as the results piled up. No cavities, he told McBride, scratching his head.

Ground is stable. No gas pockets, no fissures. Nothing to explain it. Then what happened to him? McBride pressed. Voss shrugged. Beats me. Maybe he just ran off.

With his wife watching and two others, the geologist had no answer, but he pointed out something odd. The grass where Orion vanished had yellowed, forming a near perfect circle 15ft across. Beyond it, the field remained green and lush.

Could be heat, Voss offered, or some chemical reaction. McBride, unconvinced, wrote it down.

The Selma Free Press ran a story, Local Farmer Vanishes in Broad Daylight, and a few papers in Mobile and Montgomery picked it up. Most dismissed it as a tall tale, suggesting lightning or a sudden fit of madness. But in Selma, the whispers grew darker.

The preacher took to his pulpit, warning of demons in unseen realms. The Bible speaks of men taken by spirits, he thundered. Orion Williamson crossed a line he shouldn't have.

Children dared each other to step into the circle, giggling nervously when nothing happened, adults avoided the area as much as possible, crossing themselves as they passed. The Williamson farm became a place of quiet dread, its fields untended, its hogs sold off.

Eliza clung to hope, though it frayed with each passing day. She stopped eating, her frame thinning, her eyes sunken. Thomas grew sullen, spending hours staring at the circle.

One night he woke her, his voice trembling, with news that he had just seen his father standing in the field. Eliza grabbed a lantern and ran outside, Thomas trailing behind. The circle glowed faintly under the moonlight, but there was no sign of Orion.

The next morning she packed a bag and took Thomas to her sister's in Mobile. The farm stood abandoned, its windows dark, its porch sagging.

Armor checked on it, occasionally finding the circle unchanged, yellow and brittle, a scar on the land. McBride kept the case open, his notebook filling with questions. He interviewed the Wrens again, their story unwavering.

He wrote to a colleague in New Orleans, a man versed in oddities who replied with a single line, sounds like a tear in the world. A year later, a stranger wrote into Selma. He was tall and gaunt, with a battered hat pulled low over his eyes.

He stopped at the general store, asking for the Williamson place. The clerk placed him down the road. The man reached the farm at dusk, dismounting near the circle.

He carried a satchel from which he pulled a pendulum, a brass weight on a chain. He held it over the spot, watching it swing in tight, erratic loops.

Satisfied, he knelt, pressing his palms to the earth, and murmured words no one heard. Armor passing by spotted him. Who are you? He demanded, gripping his rifle. The stranger stood unruffled. Name's Elias Crow. I study things like this.

Places where folks vanish. Study? Armor snorted. Ain't nothing to study. Orion's gone. Crow smiled thinly. Gone where, though? That's the question.

He spent the night in the field, scribbling in a leather bound book. At dawn he approached Armour's house, his face grim. Something happened here, he said. A door opened briefly and closed. Williamson stepped through.

A door? Armor asked. Crow shrugged. Door to another place, Another time. Maybe I've seen it before. Kansas in 49. The girl disappeared.

Same way Grass died in a circle there, too. Armor stared. You saying he's alive? Could be. Or he's nowhere at all. Crow left that day, promising to return with answers he never did.

Years passed and the Williamson vanishing faded into Selma's folklore. The farm crumbled, reclaimed by vines and neglect. The circle remained a stubborn patch of dead earth, even as the field around it thrived.

Travelers occasionally stopped, drawn by rumors but found only silence.

Eliza died in: 1863

On quiet nights, locals swore they heard a faint voice from the field calling for Eliza. They'd crossed themselves and hurry home, leaving the field to its secrets. Orion Williamson was never found. Not in Selma, not anywhere.

No body, no trace. No resolution. Was it a trick of the mind? A cosmic fluke? Or a glimpse into something vast and unseen? The world moved on. Wars raged and cities rose.

But the hollow field endured, a mute witness to a moment when reality frayed. The stories presented are inspired by true events. Names may have been changed for privacy reasons.

New episodes of When Reality Frays are uploaded every Monday and Thursday.

If you're enjoying the journey into the strange, the mysterious and the unexplained, be sure to press that Follow or Subscribe button and turn on all reminders so you're alerted whenever an episode drops. Until next time, thank you for listening to When Reality Frays.