Campfire Radio Theater · Haunted Air Audio

The Ghost of Lori Keegan

October 19, 2021·41 min·4 clips

Paul confesses to distracting Angela while Rebecca tied Laurie to the tree, just before a dark serpent rises.

After midnight, the room changes. Angela senses the thing that has found its way back after years away: a bent version of a childhood friend, whispering from the dark. Laurie has come calling, but not in any comforting way. The narration makes the warning plain for anyone who ever treated bullying like a game. This is not Laurie made whole again. It sounds more like the part of her that never got out. Then the story slips back to school. Angela remembers Laurie, Gizmo the hamster, and that painful little hope that the other kids might finally let her in. They don't. Rebecca takes Gizmo from his container and drops him into a terrarium with a king snake. The room erupts. A teacher pushes the children back, Laurie is kept from seeing too much, and Rebecca gets suspended. School discipline can't touch the worst of it, though. Laurie has watched a harmless creature suffer because someone wanted to be cruel. Angela tries to be kind. She needs her inhaler, and Laurie stays near her, asking how bad the asthma is. For a moment, friendship feels like shelter. Then Laurie says she wishes Rebecca could feel what she caused and asks Angela what karma means. Angela keeps it simple: good and bad come back, though no one can say when. Gizmo still hangs over everything. If people get somewhere after death, Laurie wants that for him too. When a boy approaches Angela with an excuse about the snake, she hears the fear in it. That is where the episode tightens. The midnight ghost is scary, sure. The worse part is how one cruel act can grow teeth when everyone else looks away.

As heard by us

A childhood wrong returns as a ghost story with a steady, low burn.

Campfire Radio Theater's The Ghost of Laurie Keegan turns a childhood wrong into a ghost story built around Angela, Laurie, and the debt that keeps circling back.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a ghost story that turns schoolyard cruelty into a supernatural debt and never lets go.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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