Just Sleep - Bedtime Stories for Adults · Bedtime Stories with Taesha Glasgow

The Lady Vanishes: Raise Your Hand - Mystery Sleep Story

·43 min·3 clips
Iris presses her smoldering cigarette against the nurse's hand, discovering the impostor is a man.
The episode opens with host Tayshia welcoming listeners to the Just Sleep Podcast, noting that ads run before but not during the story, with a premium ad-free option available. She continues the serialized reading of The Lady Vanishes by Ethel Lina White, picking up at chapter 27. Iris, the protagonist, finds definitive proof of Miss Froy by spotting her small, distinctive handwriting scratched onto the carriage window, left as a casual holiday gesture. Reinvigorated but frightened, Iris tries to reach other passengers, but is physically blocked in the narrow corridor by the towering Baroness. When a sinister nurse attempts to pull Iris into the patient compartment, Iris burns the nurse wrist with a cigarette to escape. She then runs to the dining car to appeal to a Cambridge professor and his companion Hare, but her feverish account sounds incoherent and the professor prioritizes finishing his dinner. The doctor, the Baroness orchestrator, conducts a controlled demonstration showing the patient heavily bandaged and threatening that any attempt to remove the dressings will cause fatal bleeding and result in murder charges for Iris, successfully freezing her into inaction. In chapter 28, Iris appeals to the professor one final time, arguing that if Miss Froy disappears after they reach England, he will regret not acting. The professor, weighing the cost of missing his weekend engagement at a Welsh estate, is persuaded partly by the doctor himself, who asks the professor to accompany him to the hospital to lend credibility to the doctor account. The professor accepts, interpreting this as proof there is nothing to hide. Iris calls out Miss Froy name loudly in the corridor. In chapter 29, from Miss Froy perspective, she hears Iris call her name through a drug-induced haze, manages to raise and flutter her fingers in response, but the signal is unseen because she raises her hand moments after everyone has left the corridor. The doctor and his driver, disguised as a nursing sister, are overheard discussing plans to drive through the night to their home territory after Trieste, dispose of Miss Froy body at a deserted wharf where eels will eliminate the evidence, and incinerate her belongings. They note they cannot risk harming the English girl further as it would complicate matters. The chapter ends with Miss Froy parents at home by the fire, tracing her expected journey on the map as she mentally pictures their cottage garden and the lit path she hopes to reach. The reading is delivered in a calm, measured voice designed to ease listeners to sleep, with pacing that slows during atmospheric descriptive passages.

As heard by us

A patient mystery that keeps its calm while the tension tightens.

The chapter keeps a patient pace while a missing passenger, a suspicious doctor, and the push toward Trieste slowly lock into place. Iris finds the name on the glass, gets the proof she needed, and then has to sit with a bluff that lands hard.

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Why you'd press play

A sleepy old-story read-aloud with a foggy mystery thread, dinner talk, and a quiet goodnight.

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