An appraiser bolts from an old mental hospital after hearing identical, unexplained screams three times.
Ben opens the 2025 Christmas Campfire episode by noting it will be a two-parter due to the volume of listener submissions, and describes his setup: home alone with his dog, lamp on, city quiet outside because people have gone home for Christmas. He reads the first story from Andrew, a high school student in New Mexico in the fall of 1999. Andrew was trying to impress a girl named Lauren and spent time with his nerdy friend Rich, who played football despite being academically strong. On Halloween, a neighbor gave them directions through a cornfield as a supposed shortcut, and the experience in the cornfield turned disturbing in ways Andrew describes as difficult to categorize. Ben reads a series of additional listener stories submitted from around the world, each sharing the quality of being ordinary enough in their setup that the anomalous element arrives without warning. Common threads include encounters with animals behaving strangely, figures seen in darkness that could not be explained, sounds in empty buildings, and experiences of sudden inexplicable dread in places that felt wrong. Ben's presentation is straightforward and non-sensational, allowing the listener accounts to carry their own atmosphere. The Christmas Campfire format is established as an annual event at Dark Histories, distinct from the show's normal historical true crime and folklore episodes, and the tone is deliberately intimate and seasonal. The episode ends partway through the submissions with a note that part two will follow shortly.
