True beauty comes from within. All that vibrant blood and glistening viscera and so forth.

Welcome to Night Vale.

Haunted houses. Weeping ghosts. Talking dolls. Closet clowns. Bathroom banshees. The Wandering Freak. Evil Greg. The Bad News Bears. These are just a few examples of traditional Halloween horrors that we will not be talking about tonight. Some have complained that Halloween is getting too scary, and after an online petition signed by upwards of twelve people, the City Council has passed an emergency decree proclaiming this to be our first ever Scare-Free Halloween. For all you enthusiasts out there, don’t panic. We’ll still be recognizing the holiday. But now it will be a celebration that everyone can enjoy equally, in the sense that no one will enjoy it fully, and thus it will be equal.

To help everyone have as much fun as possible tonight, I’ll be going through a lineup of Halloween activities that promise to be both festive and safely devoid of any thrills and/or chills.

First up: at sundown, there will be a family-friendly outdoor movie screening of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre at Rattlesnake Rest Cemetery. Bring your own lawn chairs and favorite snacks and settle in among the tombstones with this horror classic, now re-cut to get rid of the scary stuff. A group of friends take a road trip to the Texas hill country on a beautiful summer day, get some Cokes at a gas station, and have a swim. Run time, 7 minutes. If you’re still craving more cinematic stimulation, stick around for the second half of the double feature, a newly censored cut of the horror classic Mermaids, starring Cher. For those of you with young children, don’t worry: this version completely edits out all the horrific transformation scenes where Cher becomes a ravenous mermaid, rips out Bob Hoskins’ jugular vein with her teeth, and makes numerous ships crash at sea with her haunting auto-tuned siren song. I know what you’re thinking. If you cut out those scenes, what’s even left of the movie? But I’ve checked it out myself and this version plays surprisingly well as an angsty dramedy about female identity and unconventional family dynamics.

We’ll get to more Scare-Free Halloween activities in a moment. First, the headlines.

Select citizens will be secretly abducted next week and turned into exact replicas of themselves as part of a large-scale study by the College of False Biology. The department wants to assure the public that this is painless and involves a simple process of synthesizing the participant’s personality, deactivating their real self, then re-uploading their simulated consciousness back into their body and sending them home to their families. None of their loved ones will ever know this process has occurred, and the participant will also be kept blissfully unaware. “Blissful” is a bit of a misnomer as the participants will no longer be able to feel actual emotions, but they will be able to mimic the full range of emotions perfectly. Participants will be studied over the course of their lifetime to see if this switcheroo causes any disruptions to their social lives or relationships, but the hypothesis is that it will not, as one can never truly know another person, and how you perceive someone else, even those closest to you, is mainly a projection based on your own history and experiences and desires and needs. Participation in the study is voluntary, chosen by lottery from the pool of those who checked the box on their DMV forms about consenting to the scientific use of their body someday. Oh, wait a minute, back up. Looks like I’m reading an out-of-date piece of news copy. This is not happening next week. Looks like it happened…three weeks ago. Sorry about that! Still good to know.

Now, a Halloween Safety Message from the Sheriff’s Secret Police.

Halloween is a time when people wear costumes. Costumes allow the wearer a certain level of anonymity. This anonymity makes a person feel braver and less inhibited than they normally would. You might find yourself at a party with other people in costumes. You may have the overwhelming impulse to speak your true feelings to another person—your feelings about yourself, your feelings about the world, your feelings about them—and whether that truth is positive or negative, it’s definitely not something you would normally say out loud if you were sitting together on a park bench or standing in line at the Ralphs, wearing your regular clothes and naked faces, out in broad daylight. It might feel good at the time, but this level of honesty is extremely dangerous and can change relationship dynamics forever. So if you find yourself loosening up a little too much tonight, remember what Secret Police cartoon spokesdog Barks Ennui always says: (in Barks voice) When you keep things inside, you keep things safe! Woof woof!

Now back to our calendar of Scare-Free activities.

The alley that’s always glistening with wetness whether or not it’s been raining will host a pop-up event by visiting psychic, Amanda! Approach her mystical pup tent by the discarded wood pallets and get ready to be blown away by her uncannily accurate predictions. She uses her own patented combination of Pick-Up Sticks, Magic 8 ball, and Sushi Go! cards to look deep into your destiny. Per the City Council decree, she has been directed to only reveal the good things that are going to happen to you and keep all the bad things to herself. Oh, she’ll still see them, all right. You might notice a concerned expression flicker across her face before being quickly replaced by a practiced look of neutrality, followed by a smile and a polite change of topic. But no matter what Amanda sees, she has promised under penalty of law that under no circumstances will she utter even a hint about the impending disasters, tragedies, or major bummers your life may have in store. She will focus only on the upcoming successes in your career, wealth, love life, or personal growth. And if there’s nothing positive on the horizon for you, she might just say something like “Huh, that’s weird, I, uh, I don’t see anything!” And then she’ll send you home with one of those red plastic fortune-telling fish that flip over in your hand and tell you whether you’re fickle or passionate or hungry or have ADHD, based on the moisture from your skin.

More on our Scare-Free Halloween roundup in a moment. First, let’s go to Deb, a sentient patch of haze, with a word from our sponsors.

DEB: Today’s show is brought to you by bleach. Want to clean up something pretty serious? Have a problem that can’t be handled with mere soap and water? Need something heavy duty to wash away an especially nasty incident without a trace? Let bleach be your silent confidante. Bleach is a whiz at removing even the most horrific stains from walls, floors, ceilings, car interiors, bathtubs, and abandoned warehouses late at night. Have a witness that might get you into hot water? One teaspoon of bleach in a single cup of coffee will take care of that. On the run? Bleach can also be used to lighten hair and alter facial appearance. Take a few big huffs straight from the bottle and you might even be able to forget any of this ever happened. Get a fresh start with bleach.

CECIL: Thanks, Deb! Now, traffic.

Strange things have been dying on the highway lately. They appear on the side of the road as dark heaps in different sizes and unrecognizable shapes. They disappear, they reappear, they change. Truckers call out to other truckers on their CB radios at night and say things like, breaker breaker, anyone see that dead thing off Exit 17? I don’t know what it was but the vibes are definitely off, over.

Sometimes it’s lying in the median, sometimes sprawled in the ditch, sometimes blocking the road. People swerve and swear and suck in their breath and keep moving. No one stops to get a closer look, but everyone thinks about what they’ve seen for a long time afterward. It changes shape in their mind from a deer to a porcupine to an octopus to their ninth grade English teacher. It is all of these things and none of them. It has a tail, it has antlers, it has feathers, it has a tweed blazer, it has a Rachel haircut, it has something that was once inside of its body now spilling out onto the asphalt. Sometimes there’s steam rising up from the body. Other times, it’s cold as stone and stiff as a board. The only thing that anyone knows for sure is that it was once living and is now dead.

This has been traffic.

Back to your one-stop guide to a relaxing Halloween.

The John Peters Imaginary Corn Maze Experience is back, due to popular demand! The popular demand is that we finally locate those who went missing in the corn maze two years ago. John Peters, you know, the farmer? His crop of imaginary corn was a real bumper this year, allowing him to build the biggest, best maze yet.

“If you wanna find those missing folks, you’re gonna have to get your hands dirty in that there maze!” he howled in a tone of festive challenge from atop a stack of hay bales at the entrance to the maze. “They’re surely in there somewheres! Make the right choices and solve the puzzle and you shall be rewarded by joyful reunification with your long lost kinfolk! But watch out for the Minotaur who stalks the stalks,” he continued in a more sinister tone, “for he is big and ugly and dines on human flesh!” He was then pulled aside by a representative for the City Council and informed of the new policy banning horror-themed Halloween activities.

“My bad!” he announced, climbing back onto the hay bale. “Forget what I said about the Minotaur! I’ll just go ahead and let him out. There’s a hidden exit out the back way here, lemme open ‘er up. Go on, big feller! Go on, git!!! Wow, look at him run. He’s good and mad, isn’t he? Anyway, nothing scary in there now! Come on down, folks. The maze is probably the safest place to be right now, actually.”

He added that there will also be an un-haunted hayride, as he furiously crossed out the word “haunted” from a big banner. So, just a regular ride on the back of a truck, I guess.

More wholesome Halloween hijinks after the Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner.

Have you ever wondered why a coyote howls? There are actually several different reasons!

Some howl to find a mate. Several times a year, all the males of a pack will gather in a circle and have a howling contest while the females judge from the sidelines. The males with the loudest voices are deemed obnoxious, the higher nasal voices are considered nerdy, and the ones who have a lower-pitch with moderate breathiness and a strong melodic variation are voted the most ideal mate.

Some howl to warn rival packs to stay away from their territory. If tensions escalate, this can culminate in a big dance battle with both packs taking turns howling and snapping their teeth and prancing through the moonlight in impressively choreographed numbers until one side wins.

Yet another reason is celebration. If a coyote succeeds in bringing down a big juicy kill, the other coyotes will howl in praise of the slaughter. These howls tend to be the loudest and most unhinged, often sounding like deranged laughter on the wind. It sometimes has a chant-like rhythm to it, which wildlife researchers recognize as a victory song with lyrics that roughly translate to: We love to hunt, we love to kill, it gives us all a real thrill! It makes us glad, it brings us glee, bloodshed, bloodshed, merry are we!!!

So if you hear the coyotes howling at night, remember that it’s a natural part of their biological behavior and is nothing to be afraid of. It’s when you can’t hear them that you should be worried.

Now, back to your guide to Halloween serenity.

Every year, an estimated 500 people are treated for Halloween-related stab wounds here in Night Vale. The majority of these incidents are caused by pumpkin carving mishaps, while about ten percent are caused by homicidal slashers on a rampage. We can’t do anything about the slashers, that’s just a let-go-and-let-god kinda thing, but the Night Vale Emergency Department has issued several recommendations to help prevent injuries as we jab our gourds this year.

The first safety tip is: use your safety tips! That’s what the ER is calling your fingernails, to be cute. Instead of the usual blades, power saws, and machetes, try scraping out your design using the natural knives your ancestors gave you, the hard sharp bits at the ends of your fingers. It will take longer, a lot longer. It will still cause bleeding and bruising and discomfort, but it won’t be life threatening and that’s all the Emergency Department cares about. As an added precaution, the hospital will be locking its doors tonight to get those statistics down and make this the safest Halloween on record.

Just in case this is all starting to sound like an incredibly dull evening: never fear! Pun intended. There will be one sanctioned scary activity tonight, to keep the spirit of the holiday alive. We’ll get to that after the weather.

[THE WEATHER]

For all you die-hard horror heads, there’s still one scary activity you can participate in tonight. It’s a ritual-based game called There’s No One Home, and you can only play it all by yourself alone in your house, which is the reason it’s being permitted.

I will now read the instructions for the game, which were found folded between the pages of an ancient Sumerian text.

Step One. Make sure you’re the only one home. You may think you’re alone, but a lot of times, this simply isn’t true. Check your closets, crawlspaces, attics, the gaps between the walls, behind the doors, and behind the shower curtain. If there is indeed no one else home, you can continue the game.

Step Two. Walk to the following rooms in this order: Living room. Kitchen. Bedroom. Bathroom. Living room. Bedroom. Living room. Collect one object from each room and leave that object in the next room. Repeat this process three times.

Step three. Turn off every light and turn on every faucet. Sit down on the floor and close your eyes.

Step four. Pay close attention to the sound of the running water until you hear a burbling voice say a word, loudly and clearly. If that word is “hello,” you can continue the game. If that word is “hollow,” immediately leave the house and never return.

Step five. If you’re still playing, go back to the bedroom. You will see a man sitting on the edge of your bed in the dark. Look him in the eye and tell him out loud “There’s no one home.” If he leaves the house quietly, congratulations, you’ve won the game. If he doesn’t leave, say again louder, “There’s no one home!” He will then stand up. You’ll be surprised by how tall he is. He’ll start moving toward you. Tell him again “There’s no one home!!” your voice cracking with rising panic. The bedroom around you will change. The house around the bedroom will change. The streets around the house will change. You will sense these changes but not actually see them, because your eyes will be fixed on the thing moving toward you that was once a man but has become a formless all-consuming darkness. “There’s no one home,” you’ll whisper one last time. And it will now be true, because you will be somewhere else, and your house will be empty. You have won the game, but it’s a different game than the one you thought you were playing.

Stay tuned for the soothing clank of chains, the melodic creak of door hinges, and the gentle cackle of maniacs in the distance.

Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.

PROVERB: Don’t beat around the bush, you’ll wake up the critters that live in there.