Death by Dying · Evening Post Productions

Obituary 06: Wait... I Thought He Died?

·48 min·3 clips

Gert has been living beneath the Crestfall cemetery for two and a half months — naked in a loincloth made from old underwear, eating worms like spaghetti, and spooning corpses for comfort.

1. Death by Dying is a dark comedy fiction podcast created by Evan Gulock and Nico Gerantis, set in the fictional town of Crestfall, Idaho; this episode is 'Obituary 06: Wait... I Thought He Died?' 2. The cast includes Evan Gulock as the Obituary Writer and the Button-Eyed Raven, Tucker Ramger as Gert, Hedley Knights as the Silent Nuns, Lauren Denby as the Angel of Death, and Angela Morris as Charlotte Dawson. 3. The episode's central premise is whether the Obituary Writer can resurrect his dead friend Charlotte — he has her still-beating heart in a strawberry rhubarb jam jar from Carlson and Carlson's Delicias Pastry Shop, and he has just exhumed her body from Crestfall Graveyard. 4. The episode opens with a deadpan description of Charlotte's funeral: walrus balloons on her casket, a concerto performed on a violin made from a dead possum, and a crowd staring at a wooden box while burying their 'suffocating fear of the fragility of life.' 5. Walter Grimsley, the graveyard groundskeeper, interrupts the body theft, having been betrayed by a winking deer; this launches an explanation of a centuries-long feud between his family and the deer of Crestfall, dating to 1872 when his great-great-grandfather Dunderforth poisoned flowers to kill a doe and only made the deer stronger. 6. The Obituary Writer escapes into Dunderforth Grimsley's mausoleum, which contains a detonator in the corpse's suit, tiptoes through tripwires, and falls through the tomb's floor into a tunnel beneath the entire cemetery. 7. The tunnels are described from below: coffin bottoms visible in the ceiling, roots in the walls, the quiet neighborhood of the dead — and a meditation on how above-ground cemeteries create the 'illusion of normalcy' while the view from below makes death 'seem so strange.' 8. The Obituary Writer finds Gert — naked except for a loincloth made from old underwear — curled in the fetal position; Gert has been underground for 'exactly two and a half months' after being shot in the stomach by accident and presumed dead at the funeral of a character named Wyatt. 9. Gert's underground life is cataloged in escalating absurdity: surviving on worms eaten 'like spaghetti noodles,' a vitamin D deficiency causing itchiness, visions of women who vanish, and cuddling corpses for companionship — he is always the big spoon and the embrace is never returned. 10. Two cloaked figures — the Silent Nuns — appear with 'vacant eyes, jagged fangs, faces like misshapen clay,' reveal Charlotte's corpse between them (lifeless but smiling), and explain they feed on grief beneath the cemetery 'where the soil is soaked with tears.' 11. The empathic vampires lick tears from the Obituary Writer's face; he reflects that Charlotte had once told him their 'fake happiness was better than living with reality' and he briefly understands what she meant. 12. Gert attacks one of the Silent Nuns, and its habit falls away to reveal 'a deformed body covered in throbbing black veins'; the Obituary Writer grabs Charlotte and runs. 13. Gert's death speech enumerates a modest life's disappointments: food at his favorite restaurant was 'just okay,' he was loyal to Don's Dinner Bucket despite its mediocre offerings, his best friend was a teddy bear named Snuggles Winky, and the only woman he loved accidentally shot him and occasionally refused to go to Don's Dinner Bucket with him. 14. He reveals his real name is Marion and asks not to be forgotten before being consumed by the empathic vampire. 15. The Obituary Writer has a near-death experience in which Charlotte appears as an angel-of-death figure who explains that 'nature isn't finite, nor is it singular' — dying means becoming 'unhinged from reality' and entering a 'malleable realm where anything is possible.' 16. Charlotte tells the Obituary Writer that people usually go to a place that makes them feel most at home when they die; he is somewhere he could only reach by dying, which suggests he has gone to find her. 17. He returns to the physical world by insisting he has to 'keep on living,' and Charlotte says 'this is going to hurt.' 18. The detonator destroys Dunderforth's mausoleum; the Obituary Writer is blasted out of the tunnel and believes it is snowing before realizing the 'snow' is ash from 'hundreds of obliterated corpses.' 19. The episode closes with the Obituary Writer hiding Charlotte's body in a garment bag, riding away on a phantom bicycle, and reflecting on Gert's life: 'Again and again, nature called for his death. And he fought back.' 20. The tone is consistently and deliberately absurdist Gothic comedy — death treated with elaborate mock-solemnity and self-aware dark humor; the show wears its influences in audio drama and dark fiction clearly.

As heard by us

A funeral, tunnels, and a detonator keep this story wobbling between elegance and lunacy.

The funeral of Charlotte Dawson is staged with a calm, almost severe formality, and that restraint makes the odd details land with more force: walrus balloons at the casket, a wild man on a violin made from a dead possum, and a rain-soaked graveyard full of lowered heads and…

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Why you'd press play

Press play for Charlotte Dawson's funeral, where walrus balloons, a dead-possum violin, and a coffin escape plan built around a detonator share the same graveyard air.

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