I'm Amy Nicholson, the film critic for the LA Times. And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters. We come together to host Unspooled, a podcast where we talk about good movies.
Critical hits. Fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them. We're talking Parasite the Home Alone. From Grease to the Dark Knight. So if you love movies like we do, come along on our cinematic adventure. Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to hit the follow button.
Can you change your personality? How does peer pressure work? Should you ever really trust your gut? These are just a few of the topics we've recently tackled on my podcast, Something You Should Know. It's a podcast where leading experts give you valuable intel that you can use in your life today. I'm the host, Mike Carruthers, and with over 1,000 episodes and over 4,000 mostly five-star reviews,
I invite you to check out Something You Should Know wherever you listen. Welcome, friend. Follow me. We're going somewhere dark, somewhere dangerous. Most people would never dare enter the place we're going. There's no telling what horrors we'll find, what terrors we'll uncover. Don't say I didn't warn you. We might discover terrible monsters lurking there.
Be careful. They could follow you out. Or maybe they're already inside you. Are you afraid? Good. Now you are ready to enter the warning woods. I'm awake, and I don't know why. I don't know what time it is. I want to check my phone or my watch, which are both contained in a gallon-sized plastic bag near the entrance to my tent, but when I try to reach for them...
My arms do not respond. Nothing will respond. I was already sitting up when I woke, but I don't know why. Did I have a nightmare? Maybe. Might have been too much metal in the fish I caught for dinner. Something made me sleep uneasily up until this point. I woke frequently, but I fell back asleep before I could really register any thoughts.
I might have heard sounds outside the tent. I can't remember. What sounds do I hear now? Maybe they'll give me a clue as to why I'm awake, sitting up in my tent, unable to move. Is this... Sleep paralysis? I've heard of that before. There are no sounds outside my tent. Crickets are chirping in the far distance, but I don't hear any nearby. That's strange.
Oh, there's a tree frog croaking, but it's not nearby either. Everything sounds far away. They warned me about coming here alone, and now I regretting ignoring them. I'm talking about the people in Bedlam, just to the east of these woods. That's where I stopped to fill my water bladders and have one last hot meal I wouldn't have to cook over a fire before trekking off into the forest with nothing but the pack on my back.
This was just supposed to be yet another journey into a supposedly haunted forest for YouTube. Too bad I can't make myself grab my camera. I'm standing up now, stooping under the dewy roof of the tent. I didn't make myself stand, I was attempting to reach my phone. I unzip the tent flap and see it is still dark outside. It must be the early morning hours because the moon is hidden behind the treetops.
but there's no trace of sunlight dimming the stars yet. The stars shine down upon me, cold and distant. I turn and face my tent, then stare into it for minutes on end. This must be a dream. I don't know what I'm supposed to look for or see, but I can't look away. I go back into my tent, but not for clothes as I'd hoped. I'm only wearing the t-shirt and boxers I slept in. Instead...
I unsheathed the knife tied to my pack. Its six-inch fixed steel blade flashes sporadically in the starlight, making me twitch or jump every time. Every flash looks like it's coming toward me. I can feel its weight in my hand, but I cannot control that hand. I possess no will over my body. My body which seems perfectly capable of functioning on its own. Whatever it needs the knife for.
I can only guess, but try not to, since the first few possibilities that come to mind make me dizzy. Being dizzy inside a body which will not respond is an awful experience. I'm walking now. I'm treading at an even pace away from my tent with no light, barely any clothes, and a big knife. Only, it doesn't feel like I'm walking. It feels like we're walking.
Like I'm separated from myself, walking beside me. Only me isn't quite me. I don't feel the way I normally feel deep within me. There's a dark part in the basement of my mind that feels... How do I put this? Sort of... giddy. Kind of gleeful. But in the most atrocious way. I feel a desire to cause pain for the hell of it. For entertainment. But upstairs, this, the part that's talking, is me, and knows the part down there is some kind of infestation.
Whatever's controlling me is clumsy. As I trip through the brush and over fallen branches, I wonder if this is some form of sleepwalking. If so, when will I wake up? What will it take to shake this paralysis? I walk for what might be an hour. My legs and hands are completely numb. My feet, if I could feel them, would be screaming at me to stop walking over sticks and sharp stones so carelessly.
but due to the cold I can only feel a muted throbbing coming from them. At this point, I'm worried I'm too far from my tent to make it back. I won't be able to find my way, but even if I could... I'm not sure my body could take me there. I stop at a seemingly random point between two near trees. The force controlling my body takes over my eyes for the first time, focusing them, narrowing my field of vision.
By now my eyes have adjusted well to the dark, and while I still find it difficult to see, I can barely make out glistening dew along a massive spiderweb mere inches from my nose. Its shiny black creator stares back at me with its front legs raised to defend against me. The spider backs up when our eyes meet.
My hand shoots forward, tangling itself in the web as my fingers pinch the T-plate-sized spider and pluck it off. I turn it over, holding it belly-side up, and prod at it with the tip of my knife. Its legs turn inward with each poke. The spider's abdomen twitches at the sky. I can feel its desperate movements in my icy fingers. I hold my knife outward, upside down, away from my body. When I let go, it slices into the ground and remains upright. I lift the writhing spider up to my face.
Its legs spread as wide as my ears. I observe its pincers clamping repeatedly as if silently reprimanding me or perhaps screaming in terror. The now available fingers of my empty right hand pinch around the leg nearest the spider's head on the right side, and I pull. The leg breaks off with more effort than I expect. The big spider is sturdy, more like a small animal than a bug. The leg twitches between my fingers after it's detached.
and I toss it at the mauled web in front of me. It sticks. I pull the opposite leg off and do the same with it. One by one, I rip the spider's legs off and toss them at the web. Not all stick, but those that do keep moving for many seconds as I hold the upside-down spider's body in my left hand. I toss it, too, at the web, where its legs are now going still, but it bounces off and falls to the ground. I can't see it anymore, but I imagine it lying there, its pincers twitching.
its eight eyes staring upward, reflecting the stars. I step on it. It cracks under my bare foot, and something wet gushes between my toes. I feel indifference in the dark part below. I yank my knife from the dirt and hack away what's left of the spiderweb. One of the legs falls onto my forearm and sticks. I do not remove it. I pass between the trees and keep walking deeper into nowhere.
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Brimming with sardonic wit and culminating in a shocking conclusion, Victorian Psycho plunges readers into the chilling mind of an iconic new literary psychopath. Find the horror novel of the year. Victorian Psycho wherever books are sold.
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It's a miracle I haven't sustained more serious injuries. The spider's leg has fallen off and bits of web have balled up in wet gray pills amongst the hairs of my forearm. I feel hungry. but the hunger originates with the dark part below. I don't like the way it craves. Its desire for pain mingles with my hunger until I can't feel any separation between them. I believe.
I am hunting now. Mosquitoes land on me frequently, and I do nothing to bat them away. I see them burying their needles into my skin. I watch their abdomens turn red. They fill themselves from me like I'm a gas station along a lonely road. I have at least a dozen on me at this very instant, feasting on my arms and legs. I feel them on my neck.
creating itches I cannot scratch. My body is sending so many signals, they sound like static. I come to a downward hill but make no adjustment to my speed. I stagger and almost fall. I feel I might lose my footing with every step and tumble down until one of the tree trunks below stops me. Those trees don't look like they'll be gentle. Halfway down, my fear comes true.
My planted foot slips in mud while the other is still in the air. The ensuing slide drops me on my back. I bounce off the slanted ground and rotate until I'm ripping headfirst through leaves and brush. My left elbow pushes into the ground, apparently attempting to slow or stop me, but only causes me to barrel roll in the air. When I land, I keep rolling. I attempt to sprawl, but my body still will not respond. Without warning, I'm in the air again. I rotate in midair and land on my back.
My legs splash into a stream, and the left one fires a violent riot of nerves at my spinning brain. I see the ridge I dropped from about ten feet above where I lay. I suppose... I'm lucky to be alive. I've landed on packed sand riddled with stones, but the pain of the hundred rocks pressing into my back does not compare to the hellfire burning at my ankle.
I can't see my leg below the thigh. It's underwater. But the water running behind it looks red. The wind has been knocked out of me, but that's no problem for what's driving me. I sit up and drag my legs onto the rocky bank. It's worse than I thought. My left ankle must have hit the top of a sharp rock when I fell. It's broken. and torn halfway off. My foot is pointed sideways. My blood stains the sand. I start to panic. I have to stop the bleeding.
I worry I might bleed to death if I can't regain control of my body soon. Like, right away. My anonymous pilot tries to stand me up, but my foot is still pointed outward. When my weight presses on my severed ankle, my nervous system sends a nuclear shock through my entire body and I collapse. I hear myself howl with frustration. I abruptly raise the knife above my head and swing it down.
slicing into the remaining skin and tendons connecting my foot to my leg. I now know how it feels to cut through human flesh, as well as how it feels to be cut. and I would describe both sensations as grittier than you'd expect. There are a lot of tendons down there around the foot. That's a lot of slicing. When three dramatic chops fail to sever the dead foot, I begin sawing at my Achilles with the blade until, with a snap, it separates. With this ultimate tendon severed,
The knife cuts through what's left with ease. My spine feels like someone shoved an icicle up the base of it. The rest of me goes numb. This is probably shock. This nightmare has to end. I have to wake up. How have I not already? What is driving me and what does it want me to do? I'm almost too blinded by pain to notice what my hands are doing with my amputated foot. I'm rinsing it in the clear flowing stream, letting the blood drain out and brushing away dirt.
I've rested the knife on my leg, where it shimmers pink as it reflects the sunrise. I raise my foot out of the stream and shake water from it. Then I hold it up in the new light. examining every angle. For what, I am yet unsure. I open my mouth. Internally, I scream, but nothing comes out. Saliva is all that fills my mouth. Despite my repulsion at the sight of my own toes approaching my teeth and tongue, the dark part below is starving. My body serves it.
I close my teeth on my big toe just below the knuckle. The bone cracks near my molars. The taste of blood and something like mushrooms fills my mouth. I suck, savoring what little blood the stream did not rinse away. It tastes good the way a strong cocktail does, sweet with a hint of something mildly repulsive that I ignore. and soon begin to enjoy because it makes me feel incredible. Not me, me, but the feral, rotten thing driving me. My teeth close together.
severing the toe. I nearly choke as I swallow it whole. This nearly completes the separation of my mind from my body as I come to terms with what I've just done. I can feel my toe working its way down my throat. I sense it the entire way down. It feels like a grenade in my stomach. Before I can bite off any more toes something disturbs the brush on the opposite bank slightly downstream. I get up onto one knee, wielding my knife in my left hand, still holding my foot in the other.
A bear emerges at the water's edge. It's a brown bear, possibly a grizzly. I don't really know how to tell. Put the breed aside. All that matters is this beast with soulless eyes. is huge. We lock eyes. It stands. Even from across the stream I can tell the bear stands multiple feet taller than me and must weigh at least twice as much. It sniffs the air while keeping an eye trained on me. That eye looks so alert and intelligent and human.
Yet it's missing some indescribable element that makes its gaze so disquieting. The bear embodies hopelessness. It falls forward onto its front paws in the stream. huffs once, and charges. Water splashes up around the bear as it tears across the current with the power of a truck. I barely have time to register it before it's on my side of the stream, head cocked and jaws wide open, trailing strands of slobber.
A sound I didn't know I could make and probably could never reproduce comes from my throat. It's low and rumbles like the bear's voice, but carries a hissing tone at the top which, from my perception, stops the bear in its tracks. It brings its enormous body to a halt two feet away and closes its dripping mouth. Those disquieting eyes hold fast to mine.
as I involuntarily hold the remnants of my severed foot out to the bear. Still down on one knee, it must look like I'm making an offering to this lord of the forest, and I suppose I am. The bear accepts the offering, nipping the foot from my hand before tossing it back with its mouth, chomping twice, and dropping the mangled remains on the bank. As the bear licks and nibbles at my discarded appendage, I stand and lean against its powerful side. I am surprised it does not react.
and even further surprised when it allows me to climb onto its back. I swing one leg over each side of the great beast and clutch the fur around its neck in my hands. I am very weak. but I lay face down on the bear and hold on with everything I have left. The bear tosses its head back and gives me one final fleeting glance at my foot before it disappears down its throat.
I don't have much time. I am being transported by the Ecclesiast vessel Markava to stand trial for heresy of the highest order. But I will not renounce my work, and to my last breath I will speak the truth of this plague-ridden world. that ours is not a loving God, and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Radolf Buntwein Chapter 2, now available throughout the known world.
Enjoy the world and all its terrors? Interested to learn more about unexplained entities and dark legends from across the globe? Join myself and Dr. Sophie Yang as we share horrors, fears, and taboos from her home in Taiwan and discuss the similarities and differences between what scares souls in the East and West. Learn about what haunts the Taiwanese mountains, what comes for you in death, and much more. Check out That Scares Me Too, available now. That's too like boo.
I'm guessing the temperature is still only 40-something, and I might as well be naked, which makes me grateful for the bear's heat. I wish I could wrap its fur over the top of me. If I managed to regain control of myself and let go of the bear, I'd be alone in the middle of the forest, unsure exactly where I am, with no phone, no food or water, no clothes, or any means of finding my way back.
Not to mention, I only have one foot and am suffering what will likely be a fatal amount of blood loss. So, unsure who's actually in control now, I keep clutching the bear as it lumbers back across the stream, up the bank. and further into the forest. I assume whatever brought me to this place is now driving the bear too. Did it pass to it through my foot? I think back to the fish I caught and ate before going to sleep last night.
Is that how this thing got into me? Does it spread through living creatures like a disease? I fade in and out of consciousness as the bear carries me for what feels like multiple miles. I don't even realize I've been unconscious until I wake to the feeling of falling. I've slipped or been shrugged off of the bear's back. I land hard on a rough stone and feel my breath pushed out of my lungs for the second time that morning.
The bear lumbers off into the trees as I struggle to regain my breath. Once the bear vanishes and I can breathe again, I take stock of where I am. My face is turned upward so I can only see my surroundings through my peripheral vision. The sky is almost blue now. I'm still surrounded by trees. My wounded leg is still burning and throbbing. but everything else feels completely numb. I'm exhausted to the point of apathy. I roll onto my side and see I'm lying next to a rocky hole in the ground.
My driver pushes me up onto my elbows and makes me crawl to the edge of the rock I fell on. I stare down into the hole. It's mostly black below the first ten feet or so. I cannot see how far down it goes, but imagine it is quite deep. A smell rises from it, something sulfuric and rotten. Insects and bugs of numerous varieties are climbing out and dispersing into the brush and trees surrounding it. Ants, flies, centipedes, and spiders make up most of their numbers.
My apathy evaporates. I do not want to be near this hole anymore. I do not want to know what's down there. But I am not in control. I am pushed closer, dragging my legs around in front of me. I dangle the dirty stub of my left ankle into the hole, then my right foot. I am barely conscious. I slide myself along the rock, inching closer to the edge, hanging my legs deeper and deeper. The longer I stare into the hole, I can see incrementally further.
It just keeps going. Bugs are crawling over every rock below, climbing out of every crack and crevice the whole way down. I slide myself forward. One last time. My left hip slips over the edge, tilting me into the hole. I fall. My first collision with the wall happens maybe five feet down. It shatters my right elbow. The stub of my left leg scrapes against the opposite wall shortly after.
My back scrapes against an obtrusive stone, slowing my descent before it continues again. I am a pinball bouncing between obstacles on my inevitable journey to the bottom. My right leg catches and twists, breaking my knee apart. Half of my ribcage is shattered on an upwardly protruding boulder. From there, I roll. I am in so much agony. My own voice manages to escape the Force's control for a few seconds just to scream. My voice is cut short when I land on a flat, gravelly surface.
Finally, I've reached the bottom. I'd rather still be falling. I'd rather have every bone in my body broken than lie here unable to move as thousands upon thousands of bugs crawl over and around me. I have to shut my eyes and mouth. but I can't close my ears or nose. The bugs take full advantage of these openings. Small creatures wriggle in my ear canals and nostrils. I won't be able to keep from screaming much longer, then they'll enter my mouth too.
I can feel them on my skin, biting, consuming my flesh. My body is too broken for even the dark part below to move now. I can only move my left arm and cannot tell whether it is me or the infestation controlling it. I blindly search with my hand for the knife I must have dropped on my way down. What I feel all around me, everywhere, are bones. Bones from creatures small and large surround me, all crawling with bugs.
The knife is nowhere within reach. I am forced to open my eyes when I feel a large insect attempting to escape my skull through a tear duct. This... is when I finally scream and give them full access to me. The bugs pour into me, suffocating me. Somehow, in this moment, Knowing my pain and suffering will end momentarily, I feel the most peace I've felt since going to sleep in my tent.
but the peace is tainted by a realization which I can do nothing about. I think of the bear, how it fell under the same control as me after eating my foot. I think of the bugs consuming me now that will eventually crawl out of this hole into the forest, as well as the mosquitoes which feasted on me earlier. I think of the birds and animals that will consume those bugs.
and of the larger birds and animals further along the food chain? How long until some of them reach Bedlam and beyond? In my final moment, I pray for humanity. and for all who inhabit the natural world. You made it out. Congratulations. If you enjoyed the story, please rate, like, review, or subscribe. For ad-free episodes and behind-the-scenes episodes I call Into the Woods, become a patron with the link in the description.
You can also support the show by buying merch. That link is also in the description below. To stay up to date, follow me on Instagram and TikTok at The Warning Woods. And when you feel ready... Meet me here for another journey into the Warning Woods. Thank you for listening. All right, girls, this is the place. We'll get everything loaded over to the boat, and we'll lock up the truck. Don't leave anything behind. Wait, is that it? That's where we're going?
Yeah, that's it. Seal Skin Rock. Wow. Return to the mysteries in Don't Mind, Seal Skin Rock. Subscribe now to catch the premiere, and we'll see you on The Rock. Greetings, adventurers. Today we're excited to introduce you to a new story, Dark Dice, a horror podcast that blurs the line between actual play and audio drama, where the story is determined by the roll of the dice.
Six adventurers embark on a journey into the ruinous domain of the Nameless God. They will never be the same again. One of the players is not what they seem after a doppelganger, a creature that can assume the form and voice of whatever it kills, infiltrates the team.
As the players are picked off and replaced one at a time, can they figure out who the monster is before it's too late? Can you? Here's a quick example of what our show sounds like. The, uh, shambler with the jar of liquid inside of him. Soren Arkwright let loose an arrow that cracked the glass, passing through the spine of the creature. The shamblers still managed to maintain its forward momentum, but stumbled as it eagerly tried to bite and swipe at Soren, landing near his feet.
As Jeff Goldblum has now joined our cast, Dark Dice is available however you listen to podcasts.