Gestern • 36 Min.

Here's something you shouldn't do: go looking for the 13 Steps to Hell. Naturally, that's exactly where Gauge Illuminations is going. Maltby's 13 Steps to Hell is one of those roadside folklore tales that begins with a real place and ends with it becoming something more than the sum of its parts. Just outside Snohomish in Washington State, according to the legend, there's a staircase beneath an old cemetery. If you find it after midnight, you're supposed to walk down the thirteen steps, counting as you go. And when you reach the bottom, you're supposed to turn around. That's when things get interesting. Jimmy Mac follows the legend down into the dark, then connects Maltby's ritual of descent with H.P. Lovecraft's The Statement of Randolph Carter, another story about a nighttime journey, a descent into forbidden territory, and instructions coming back from somewhere they probably shouldn't. Along the way, there's another road into the story: David Lynch's The Straight Story, which understands that sometimes the journey itself is the story, even when the destination is nowhere near Hell. Jimmy is joined by writer and podcaster Jon Grilz of Creepy, whose love of horror and creepypasta led him to Small Town Horror and eventually to one of the most enduring corners of the scary-story universe. His story of telling creepy stories becomes a story about finding your tribe. Because that's the strange bargain at the heart of these stories. They tell us not to go there, and then they give us detailed instructions on how to go there. And when you go, you often find others who want to go there with you. And that can be the beginning of a beautiful creepy friendship. Maltby gives us thirteen steps. Lovecraft gives us a telephone line into the dark. Lynch gives us a lawnmower. And somehow we're still talking about the road. Don't turn around. Gauge Illuminations is already downstairs. Your community awaits.