Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry, I’m very annoying. Welcome to Night Vale

Listeners, as some of you may know, I’m a real horror buff, which is a term for people who like to watch horror movies in the nude.

And I regularly get requests from people who are looking for good horror movie recommendations. “I want to feel fear,” they say to me. “Please,” they say, “I want to look at a screen and be scared of it. I want to trick my adrenal system into thinking I’m about to die, but I’m not actually about to die, I’m just watching tv.”

Well, today’s the day. I’m going to run through a few of my favorite horror movies. Should you wear clothes while watching them? Well, that’s up to you.

But first an update on Steve Carlsberg and his shipping company that has a total monopoly on moving goods in and out of Night Vale. The company uses the men who are not tall and men who are not short formerly of Labyrinth, and their secret knowledge of moving through weird and wild space. Steve calls this company “Steve’s Movin’ Stuff!” with an exclamation point. He’s not great at branding, honestly.

But he is now a multi-millionaire, strolling into the Last Bank of Night Vale where he used to work as a lowly employee, now with bundles of cash and checks to deposit in his account. He says he’s not sure what to do with that money, and I told him to give it to me, and he laughed, and I said why are you laughing, I’m serious, give it to me, I want it, and he said “oh Cecil you card” and slapped my back.

I’m glad things are going well for him, but I really would like that money.

On a personal note, I’m fortunate that the lawsuit involving Esteban at witch camp was so amicably settled, and I hope we all are very welcoming of the new bear family in town. The bears were promptly sedated and caged by a commando team from the Night Vale Zoo. I’m sure they love their new home, which features luscious concrete floors, a beautiful flickering bare bulb, and an exciting crowd of onlookers gawking at them at all hours of day and night.

But Carlos is concerned about Esteban’s behavior since the camp. He has been a little withdrawn, scrying a lot, and pondering orbs. Carlos wants us to try sending him to a science camp to see if we can balance things out. If any of you have ever dealt with your child being straight up a little witch, let me know what you did about that.

I’m going to start my horror recommendations with something obvious. The Ring. Yes, it’s a popular one, but if you’re the type that wears socks while watching horror and you want to scare those socks off, then this is the movie for you.

The Ring is the story of a cursed videotape. Everyone who watches it gets a phone call, in which someone whispers “seven days” to them. And then, seven days later, a little girl crawls out of their television and kills them. However, and here’s the fun twist, no one has a VCR anymore, and so the little girl hasn’t been able to crawl out of a tv for awhile, and she’s getting bored. So she tries to get a fad going to use VCRs again, you know, a throwback thing. “VHS has a warmer texture,” she whispers with her dead voice to people as they sleep. “Digital is cold and lifeless, while VHS reminds you of safe childhood mornings.” Unfortunately, this backfires on her when people revive Betamax instead and she never gets to leave the tv again, which is a terrifying fate for her.

I saw The Ring when I was 14 years old, and I’ll tell you, I didn’t sleep right for weeks. I was just so sad that the girl couldn’t come out of the tv and be friends with me.

More soon, but now, real estate listings.

If you’re like me, it’s fun to hop on Zillow sometimes and look at the houses near you and their increasingly absurd asking prices due to the fact that we basically stopped building housing in this country in 2008.

So let’s see what we have here.

Oh this is lovely. It’s a two bed, two bath for a pretty reasonable price. Now to be clear, it consists of exactly two bedrooms and two bathrooms and no other rooms. Also none of the bedrooms or bathrooms are connected to each other, they’re in four separate structures at different addresses. But you know, 1.8 million isn’t bad for that.

Ok, here’s a 1 bedroom condo. Listing price under a million, so that’s a rare find. Now there is an HOA and the HOA does do Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery once a month, which is why condos are always opening up in that building, but this newly renovated kitchen is to die for! And you might!

Next we have a 4 bed/3 bath home. Vaulted ceilings, open kitchen, dead-eyed children crawling around in the basement, stunning views of The Black Chasm, new HVAC throughout. Listing says it’s not for sale, they just wanted to brag.

Finally this is a nice little starter home. Only 400 thousand, and it has updated appliances and an enclosed porch. Now, the location isn’t great. It’s hundreds of miles from Night Vale, past the sandwastes and the scrublands, deep into the arid nowhere that surrounds us. But hey, working from home is a thing right?

This has been real estate listings.

This next horror movie is a classic. Some might even say it’s the classic. That’s right, I’m talking about John Carpenter’s Halloween.

Filmed on a shoe string budget with an unknown cast, Halloween redefined horror forever. It’s the story of a young orphan whose Captain Kirk mask gets bleached until it’s unrecognizable. In a fit of rage about his ruined mask, our hero goes through town, meeting locals and family members he hasn’t seen in awhile. In the end, he has an argument with his sister and then leaves town. Halloween is something of a coming of age tale, and also there’s a part where a guy gets pinned to a wall with a knife, so I guess it’s also a little bit of a screwball comedy.

Today’s show is sponsored by Dick’s Auto Mall, out on Route 800, just past the man who is always on fire.

Seeking a Jeep on the cheap? Want a Ford you can afford? Look no further than Dick’s Auto Mall, which is right by the man on fire.

The man is standing by the highway. The flames melt his skin, but he never quite dies. He screams at cars that pass. His screams sound almost like words, but they cannot be deciphered. Some nights we go out and stand in the glow of his flesh and try to understand him, but we never quite do. We’re always close but never there. Some of us think that one of the words he’s saying is “obligation” or possibly “seagull”. One of those two for sure, maybe.

All to say, pass by the eternally screaming and burning man and you’ll be at Dick’s Auto Mall. Our prices can’t be beat, at least not by any place you’ll be able to get to in this remote area. Good luck shopping around.

Dick’s Auto Mall. We also think the burning man sometimes says the name “Annabel” but it’s also possible he’s saying “anvil”.

This has been a word from our sponsors.

I asked some of you at home to call in with your own horror favorites. Here they are.

CARLOS: Hi Sweetie, it’s your favorite scientist, Carlos. Oh you know I’m not much of a horror guy. If I want to feel scared, I just think about my child living in a planet totally reshaped by climate change. But if I had to pick one, I’d say Love Actually.

DANA: Uh, it’s Dana. We haven’t talked in a long time so it was certainly interesting that your first communication to me in years was a note written on the back of a 7/11 receipt that just says: “which Horror movie” with the H capitalized for some reason. Anyway, it’s The Purge 2. Let me know if you want to actually talk some time.

TAMIKA: Cecil, buddy, it’s Tamika. I’m kind of in the middle of some intense cross fit right now. I’m doing the one where you push a tire for hours and I’m hundreds of miles out in the desert now, no idea where I am or how to get back. There’s a cute little house here, though, and it has a for sale sign. Anyway, I’m sure it’ll be fine. Personally, I love vampire movies, so you know that I’m all about that sequel to Brokeback Mountain where they’re both vampires.

DEB: This is Deb the Sentient patch of haze and I’m here today to present an ad from…what no ad? You want to know my favorite horror movie? Oh sweetie, I don’t work for free. A good day to you.

CECIL: Thanks everyone who called in!

I thought it might be fun to have a little history lesson. Let’s learn together about the history of famous maxims.

We all know the phrase “take one for the team” and we know what it means, to steal one dollar from a bank in order to help a local sports team. But where does it come from?

Well this is an interesting question. It used to be that baseball teams were formed on a conscription basis, due to it being a boring game that no one wanted to play or watch. And so an army was formed, and this army would march from village to village, and at each village they would steal one young child for a life of baseball. When the army approached, the terrible thunder of their boots filling the air, the whisper would go out through the terrified town that they had come to “take one for the team”

So now you know.

Another fun saying. “A penny saved is a penny earned.”

Ok, we all know this one. It’s about cheating on your taxes. But where does it come from?

To learn about this, we have to go back to the ancient days of 1983. Back then, there was an elderly man who lived by the Old Night Vale Hospital, across town from the New Night Vale Hospital. This man was known as the penny man, and if you brought him a penny, he would pay you a penny. Not the same penny. No, he was paying you for the service of bringing him a penny, and his rate for that was one penny. He was tough but fair. His face was scrawled with dirt and his eyes squinted into yours like he was staring into the sun. At night, he would wander from house to house, knocking gently on the windows and groaning, so you would know that everything was ok and you didn’t have to worry. The penny man loves you so much, and he is sorry for what he must someday do.

Finally, the saying “a rolling stone gathers no moss” was apparently originally a sex thing. So that’s where that comes from.

Well, back to my recs.

Of course, you can’t talk about horror movies without talking about iconic horror movie themes. Who doesn’t think of Jaws when they hear that duh-duh? Or Norman having a weird time in the shower whenever a bird goes “eeh eeh eeeh” near you? But I’d say my favorite horror movie theme, and you’ll know it right away, it’ll bring to mind almost an entire movie, sort of a Proustian moment but scary, anyway, my favorite horror theme is this one:

[Horror Theme]

I’m almost out of time on today’s broadcast. Soon the woman at the end of the long hall will climb up her staircase, and switch the radio tower off for the night. And then she will slink away again down the staircase to wherever that staircase leads, none of us will ever dare to find out. So before that happens, let’s get into my absolute favorite horror movie.

I know what you’re thinking. Cecil, what is it? Is it Psycho? Or Nightmare on Elm Street? Or that home video we all received of the guy eating his own hand which definitely was a bummer to watch, which we all did, the entire thing without looking away for some reason?

No. Those are all great, except for the video of the guy eating his own hand, which was traumatizing.

But my favorite horror movie is the one about someone who is going about their day, listening to a man tell them a story. They don’t know this man, not personally, but they like his voice, and they like the stories he tells. Maybe they’ve been listening to this man for years, maybe they just found him, but here they are, with headphones or laptop or car speakers, listening to the man talk. They are now not merely themselves. They are also a listener, defined by their own passive action.

And then, the man’s voice is cut off with a hiss, and

[Cecil’s voice is cut off with a hiss, then after a few moments comes back but a little weird and muffled.]

-hear the man again a little, but something is different. Something is wrong. His voice sounds distant, like the listener is hearing him through a thick wall, or a gap in reality. The man tells the listener that he is looking at them. The listener cannot see the man, not yet. The man is tapping his long dirty fingers on his legs, and humming a melody that is older than humanity.

[off-putting humming in one ear]

His eyes are like holes with no bottom, and his teeth click like a spine breaking.

The listener is looking frantically around for the man, and indeed the man is getting closer. Perhaps the listener hears a soft squeak in the floorboards, the sound of movement through headphones, the rustle of something lurching to life in their backseat. But the listener will not see the man. Not until the man wants to be seen. That’s the bad news. The good news is the man wants to be seen very very soon.

[voice snaps back to normal]

I loooove that movie. It’s called Heat and it stars Robert De Niro as the listener and Al Pacino as the man. Oooh so spooky. You have to watch it. You have to. No, really, you’ll get in a lot of trouble if you don’t, please don’t make me report you to the authorities.

Stay tuned next for the third act of a horror movie, where things really start to fall apart.

Good night, Night Vale. Good night.