"The Puppet in the Tree"

Illustration by wifi\_failure on Twitter

### Narrator(s)

Jessica McEvoy, Mick Wingert, Mike DelGaudio, Nikolle Doolin, and David Cummings

### Next

"Gifts to Avalon"

**"The Puppet in the Tree"** is the first tale in the fifth episode of the thirteenth season of The Nosleep Podcast. In it, a girl is stalked by a schoolyard monster. Written by Rachele Bowman, it has a runtime of 27:20 and was performed by Jessica McEvoy, Mick Wingert, Mike DelGaudio, Nikolle Doolin, and David Cummings. It is the 1571st tale overall on the podcast.

## Summary

A girl in elementary school is told an urban legend about the schoolyard. An oak tree stands in the middle, where a deformed man in a multicolored animal costume, named Muppet Man, supposedly lives and eats caterpillar larvae. A boy that went missing several months before, Jason, is rumored to be one his victims, as his clothes, bloody and urine-stained, were found at the base of the tree. She usually sits under the same tree to read during recess

The girl arrives late at school one November day and makes her way across the recess yard when she sees the Muppet Man climbing down the trunk of the tree. Intensely frightened, she hears him claim he is more real than she is and that he has Jason. She runs screaming into the school and the police are called. A cop finds bits of multicolored fur all over the tree and accuses the girl of planting it, which she denies.

She is sent to stay with her grandparents across the country for a few weeks. When she returns home, she finds multicolored fur all over her pillow. Her parents yell at her and she spends the next few months avoiding the tree.

In April, while the girl sits under the tree, she sees larvae climbing on her arm. Going home after school, she finds more fur all over her room. Her mother yells at her for making a mess before sending her outside, where she sits under their apricot tree. Muppet Man appears in the tree and asks the girl to read to him. When she refuses, he claims he'll tell her where Jason is if he does. Wanting her father, who is a cop, to work less, she agrees with the hopes that finding Jason will cause her father to be able to retire.

Over the next months, the girl reads to Muppet Man during recess and after school. One day in October, after finding multicolored fur in her dresser, she gets a note from him telling her to meet him at the schoolyard tree on Halloween at 11:00. She gets her father to escort her there and he waits in the alley behind the school while she approaches.

He appears in the tree. She asks where Jason is, and Muppet Man responds that he's inside him. He removes the costume's head to reveal Jason's decayed face underneath before the whole thing collapses, empty save for Jason's corpse.

The police are called and begin an investigation, but are never able to figure out exactly what happened. Jason is laid to rest, the evidence from the case is put in a storage locker, and the girl grows up.

Years later, an old colleague of the girl's father visits and says that the costume was stolen from the storage locker recently. The next morning, she finds bits of multicolored fur all over her room.

## Cast

Jessica McEvoy as the girl

Mick Wingert as Muppet Man

Mike DelGaudio as the girl's father

Nikolle Doolin as the father's colleague

David Cummings as the cop