Patreon Unlocked: Sleeping Beauty Sickness

September 5, 2023·39 min·3 clips

A van blinds you in a parking garage, and you wake on a desert road under black stars forming unfamiliar constellations.

Dr. Ryder opens with three listener questions. For Ed, he describes how the Green River Tunnel family of unwelcome riders—supernatural beings that abduct rule-violating travelers—were first encountered on the Oregon Trail in covered wagons and have adapted their behavior to cars on Interstate 80. For Louise, who has not slept in seven days and hears whispering when she drifts off, Ryder diagnoses a dream parasite and directs her to a restful room, a specially built house that severs the parasite and imprisons it. For Nathan, Ryder traces the history of 13th floors to early skyscrapers and describes Mark Twain's 1893 encounter in the Rutledge Hotel elevator: Twain found the operator had been replaced by a massive robed figure with a pallet mask who spoke existentialist lines about all reality being a dream, lines Twain spent the rest of his life attempting to write down in an unfinished manuscript eventually published posthumously as The Mysterious Stranger. Ryder notes that nearly all true stories about hotels with 13th floors involve the elevator ride, not the room. The episode then transitions to the Ravenswood Reliquary, focusing on a diamond rose that connects to the Sleeping Beauty Sickness story. On June 4, 1926, the entire population of Ramway, South Carolina, fell asleep at 8:30 PM—the 16th birthday of Natalie Edwards—and shared a dream of eating a birthday-cake replica of their town. The same happened the next night. Natalie's parents, Perry and Jane Edwards, who ran the town's general store, noticed the sleep coincided with their daughter's bedtime. After word spread, Natalie began being whispered about; the next collective dream was a nightmare in which townspeople transformed into monsters the more they spoke badly of her. Dr. Rogers, a parapsychologist from Ravenswood University, arrives in Ramway and tries to convince the Edwards family that Natalie has sleeping beauty sickness—a real condition with documented historical cases where the afflicted's dream world is imposed on those around them. The Edwards, burned by prior charlatans, throw him out. The same day, Jim Halestrom and the Circus of Wandering Dreams arrive and set up at the edge of town. That night, the collective dream is a circus with tightropes, trapeze artists, and the entire town dressed as clowns. In the dream, Halestrom confronts Dr. Rogers in Natalie's bedroom, dismisses her condition as a talent, pulls a rose from the air, transforms it into a diamond rose, and offers Natalie the circus life. Rogers argues for Ravenswood. Natalie chooses the circus. In waking life, Halestrom and Natalie are gone; Dr. Rogers is arrested by the town sheriff on suspicion of abducting her. The episode ends on a cliffhanger, with Ryder noting the diamond rose is now in the Ravenswood Reliquary along with a music box some call the Nightmare Machine.

As heard by us

A patient paranormal dispatch that lets local reports and uncanny details build into slow-burning unease.

A Voice From Darkness begins with three listener questions and settles quickly into a controlled run through the paranormal. Dr. Malcolm Ryder's calm delivery gives the stories their edge: the impossible is stated like a case file, and that plainness works well once the episode…

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Why you'd press play

If you want your paranormal stories archived, dated, and quietly menacing, start here.

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