"Ash Hollow"

April 7, 2014 ("The Inside Out Library")

May 3, 2014 ("The Crimson Rooms")

April 11, 2014 ("Red Maggie")

15:45 ("The Signal")

15:30 ("The Inside Out Library")

9:15 ("The Crimson Rooms")

15:30 ("Red Maggie")

**"Ash Hollow"** is a quintet of tales that collectively serves as fourth tale in the twelfth episode of the fourth season of the Nosleep Podcast. The story is divided into five parts: **"The Odd Little Well", "The Signal", "The Inside Out Library", "The Crimson Rooms",** and **"Red Maggie"** (these are the individual stories' titles on Reddit, although the podcast did not use them).

All written by R.J. Wills and performed by David Cummings, the collective has a total runtime of 1:11:10. The first story runs 15:35, the second 15:45, the third 15:30, the fourth 9:15, and the last 15:30. It is the 408th tale overall on the podcast.

## Introduction

A man lives in a heavily wooded, mountainous town named "Ash Hollow". Ash Hollow sits in the middle of a popular hiking trail that runs through several states, becoming a frequent stop for weary travelers that are on the trek. The man explains that the town has a reputation of strange, unexplained events and shares a few that have occurred.

## "The Odd Little Well"

A European hiker who's walking the length of the trail stops in a local diner for the night. He chats with several locals for a few minutes before asking if anyone knows about the well out near the trailhead. The locals are confused because they don't know of any such well. The hiker explains that it was exceedingly small and sat in the middle of a tiny clearing. He also mentions that being around it made him feel uneasy.

Six months later, an older couple hiking in the opposite direction of the European man enter the diner and say they saw the well too, completely on the other end of town than the first sighting. They also mention being around it made them feel uneasy. For the next year, every month or so, a new hiker passing through will mention the well and the fact that it creeped them out, with the location changing every time. Eventually, the well sightings cease and are never brought up again.

One incident in particular incident becomes legendary. A hiker steps close to the edge of the well investigate, only to drop his expensive wristwatch down it. Crestfallen, he goes back to his tent and prepares to sleep. In the middle of the night, he awakens to hear quiet, rapid footsteps coming from the woods around him. The sounds gradually get louder until they stop right outside his tent, accompanied by high-pitched, heavy breathing. Whatever is outside the tent drops something and runs back into the woods. When the hiker checks in the morning, he finds his wristwatch sitting outside.

## "The Signal"

People driving in the woods near Ash Hollow at night suddenly begin to experience strange things such as losing the signal on their phones and hearing rumbling noises and whispering voices coming from their radios. The owner of the local radio station, David, decides to try and figure out what's going on.

A hiker about four days away from the town, Joel, suddenly begins to hear loud, distorted echoes coming from the trees around him that stop and start with regularity. The noises range from wailing voices to low tones. When he reaches Ash Hollow a few days later, he meets David and they decide to hike out into the woods to try and find the location of the signal.

Two days into the trip, David wakes Joel urgently, telling him that he hears the signal coming from the woods. They fiddle with the radio and are able to get the noises to come out, sounding even more distorted and angry than before. Though they consider turning around, they decide to push on.

On the third night, about a day's hike from the location, the pair sit around the fire until the signal erupts, ear-splittingly loud, followed by an impossibly bright light filling their campsite. David and Joel hide in their tents until morning, when both phenomena vanish. They decide to pack it up and hike back in the direction of Ash Hollow.

On the fourth night, Joel is sleeping in his tent when he suddenly hears a metallic screeching noise followed by screaming. Running out, Joel finds David's sleeping bag deserted and hears his yells coming from a broken section of branches. He chases the source of the noise, his flashlight sometimes picking up a jumbled, chaotic shape. After ten minutes, he finds David slumped against a tree, bruised and unconscious. Joel slings him over his shoulder and hikes through the night back to Ash Hollow, hearing the metallic noises behind him all the way.

When David awakens, he has no memory of who or what attacked him. He loses any interest in trying to figure out what it was. Joel searches for similar experiences, but is unable to find anything.

## "The Inside Out Library"

In the late 70s, a library is built in Ash Hollow. It has a dark, maze-like design that makes it seem bigger on the inside than it actually is. Staff members report strange events such as phantom footsteps, whispering voices, and falling books. Patrons sometime return books that the library doesn't have in their database, nor can they find them in any library database. When the patrons try to show them where they found their books, they are unable to locate the specific shelves again. Strange noises are heard as well, such as quiet conversations, the squeaking of phantom book carts, and impossible fire alarms.

A kindergarten class goes on a field trip to the library, only for a little girl to go missing. After an hour of searching, she walks back from behind a set of shelves, unharmed. The girl says she went to find a book only to come upon anunrecognizable part of the library with shelves stretching as far as the eye could see. She wandered for a while, following the lights of the "real" library and hearing her classmates call for her, but was unable to reach them until she randomly turned a corner and found herself back in the main section.

A man arrives at the library near closing to get a book, only to get lost among the shelves. A strange shuffling noise comes from the distance. When he tries to climb the shelves to get a better look around, the shuffling becomes angrier and louder. When he climbs down, the noise stops.

Eventually, the man comes across a set of double doors with a staircase leading down. At the end of his rope, he begins descending. He muses that this is impossible, since the library is a one-story building. After three flights he comes across a set of double doors reading "Third". Peeking inside, he finds another set of endless shelves. Another three stories down, he finds another door labeled "Caution: flooding". The door is locked. Another three flights and he comes across a door labeled "Warning: pale entity. No Passage".

Overcome with curiosity, he opens the door only to find a pitch-black space with more endless shelves covered with dust. A faint swishing noise can be heard, like wings flapping. He gets an experience of vastness above him. He calls out, only to see a pale, humanoid figure with glowing eyes and a wide mouth come rushing towards him out of the darkness.

The man runs back up the stairs, hearing the creature crash through the door and follow him up. He reaches the "Third" door and momentarily considers going through before deciding against it and running up the last three flights. He barely escapes the creature and runs into a worker back in the main library. He tries to explain what happened, but is unable to find the doors again.

A few years later, an elderly woman goes missing after coming in to look for a book. Shortly after, the library is closed permentantly. The narrator explains he visited the building before it was shut down and received a book not in any database anywhere, which he keeps in a safe.

## "The Crimson Rooms"

The narrator hears about a strange phenomenon in the town known as "the crimson rooms". A resident of Ash Hollow, or anyone sleeping in it, will sometimes wake up to find themselves in a crimson bed in a red room with red walls and red floors. The air is hot and dry, with the thrum of heavy machinery somewhere in the distance. Beyond the bed is a doorframe with a long red hallway.

The dreamer will wake up at uneven intervals. Sometimes, dreamers awaken shortly after leaving the bed. Others will wander an endless maze of rooms and corridors for hours, searching for an exit. Strange things will happen in the maze, like the encountering of a large, rusted metal box with holes in it that fingers and rotten scents come out of and shadowy figures. The sound of thrumming machinery always appears in the background.

The narrator visits an elderly woman who claims to have wandered the maze in a dream for what seemed like days, eventually coming upon a large room covered with decaying yellow curtains. In the center of the room beyond the last curtain is something the woman is unable to remember, with just a black pit of a memory for that moment.

After the interview concludes, the woman offers the narrator a glass of water, which he accepts. When she doesn't come back from the kitchen for several minutes, he investigates to find her standing in the center of the room staring at him. In a voice that is not her own, she tells him that the crimson rooms are much larger than anyone imagines and that it dreams of people as people dreams of it. She comes out of her trance and looks confused, asking if she drifted off. The narrator decides to stop his investigation.

## "Red Maggie"

A little girl, Lucy, moves into a large Victorian home in Ash Hollow built on the edge of the woods. In an upstairs bedroom, Lucy finds a bricked-up fireplace with a grotesque handmade doll sitting on the mantel. It has a yellow jacket with blue gloves, curly blonde hair, and a red face with two large white eyes. Written on the back of the jacket in marker is the name "Maggie". Lucy throws the doll away and decides the room will be hers.

That night, she thinks she hears a scratching noise coming from behind the bricked-up fireplace. A few days later, she is playing in the upstairs hallway when she hears a shuffling noise coming from behind the wall, like someone is inside it and moving around.

Scratching and shuffling noises then follow Lucy wherever she goes in the house, especially at night. Though she is creeped out a first, she gradually gets used to it. One day, there is no noises for hours. That night, while lying in bed, she hears the shuffling noise grow louder before seeing a dark figure standing next to her. Right as her parents rush in, it dives under the bed and is gone when they check. The parents write the whole experience off as a nightmare.

The noises continue for weeks afterward. Lucy refuses to go anywhere in the house by herself. However, the noises gradually fade until she doesn't hear them anymore. After two weeks of no activity, she heads to the upstairs bathroom to take a bath.

While in the tub, she suddenly hears the noises again. She yells for her parents, only to see a panel on the baseboard open up to reveal a woman wearing a yellow coat with blue gloves and curly brown hair. The parents arrive, but Lucy accidentally locked the door. They begin trying to break it down. The woman rises next to the tub and Lucy realizes that she has no skin on her face. She jumps out and the woman falls in just as the parents break down the door. Checking the tub, they find it empty.

Lucy refuses to step foot in the house ever again. The parents agree to move and they leave the town for good. She still has nightmares about the woman but eventually they go away. The narrator spends years trying to find the doll but is unable to locate it. He advises the listener that if they ever move into a house and find a doll waiting for them, they should leave immediately.