☝🤓Umm actually, Bonnie does not miss the turn, she runs away in the middle of the night after they stop her getting disintegrated, but she is too eager to go, too obsessed with the thought of that mystical and perfect land known as Wintry Bay
I spent 10 years as a long haul trucker. One of the first things you notice when seeing the USA from that side is the... sameness. Freeways and loading docks look roughly the same in Montana as they do Atlanta. It messes with your sense of distance. Sit in the drivers seat and follow the blue line for a few days, then go to a loading dock. Did I even move??
I grew up in an RV travelling the country. My experience was about the same. Whenever I tell people I've seen all 50 states, they always ask, what was the most beautiful place? Which one stands out. Honestly, I could hardly tell the difference for most of it. We drove in a random direction every day, and I didn't meaningfully understand where I was or where I was going. It all looked mostly the same.
i feel it’s sort of the same for the US and canada. seeing dash cam videos of highways and cities from the US, you can almost believe you might have been on that very highway or city until the city name is definitely not a city you’ve been to or a highway number from your country.
“A long haul trucker delivers a single coffin to a factory by the sea and watches its owner climb into it” One of these days someone’s gotta make a Tale Foundry Out Of Context Love your channel, shared it with my brother who loves writing and he’s gotten some really good ideas for the story he’s working on
From the thumbnail, I thought this video was about Kentucky Route Zero, but then I opened it and heard that and was overjoyed. Alice Isn't Dead is my favourite fiction podcast of all time ❤
As a foreigner who lived in the US for a few months, this is what it feels like Roads, cars, and strange places in between where humanity tries its best to make sense
America is no longer the New World but it managed to keep the Mystique. The Magic in America is very unlike the Magic of Europe because it always feels very Old World, Primeval even. Theirs Monsters that aren’t simply nature but more like they’re woven into reality, alternate worlds are familiar yet wrong like an unnerving dream, nothing about the Magic of America feels like it’s separate from us. Theirs no Land of Fairies, just the place we live twisted in ways that feel wrong but can never exactly place. We don’t have Goblins just twisted versions of people and animals. Monsters born from hunger, monsters that hide in another persons skin, deformed animals that take people in the dead of night to fates unknown, forests and woods that feel alive and hungry and streets that feel just as unnervingly alive. It’s like it’s always been here but you only occasionally notice.
@@Broomer52”four creepy hidden truths behind popular scary stories” I recommend that video to you specifically. I particularly liked the part that contrasts English horror settings with the settings of horror stories that take place in the US
@@Broomer52 I am BEGGING people who say shit like this to remember FOR A SECOND that the US is a colonizer state. People have lived on this continent for millennia in all the "wrong and twisted" places--places that European colonizers didn't understand because they aren't agricultural or industrial centers with feudalism derived governments. The "monsters born from hunger" and "monsters that hide in another person's (sic) skin" (that's not what a skinwalker is, ffs) are just "Christians hear about a pagan god and decide it must be the Devil" for the modern age. Oh the US is haunted? Weird how it's built on allllll those Native Burial Grounds. I'm sure it's just coincidence.
@cam4636 so profound. We've never that tale before. The 1st nation peoples mastered the art of colonization and genocide well before the pale face. There was no group hugging and kumbaya singing. Remember the blood on Aztec temples, the obsidian knifes used to remove still beating hearts was made by native hands, and the oceans of blood that still stains those temples, is native blood. Not all went willing to the slaughter.
To quote Tumblr user Gallusrostromegalus: “The intense and permanent haunting of a land upon which countess horrors have been visited, and that is too large and wild for us to really comprehend is probably the most intense and universal American feeling.”
I mean, Americas land hasn't seen nearly the amount of atrocities that the land "across the pond" has experienced. From UK to Japan, Russia to the tip of Africa...yeah, that level of "permanent haunting" is laughing at north and south America...
@@KristinChoruby I dont think you re getting the point. We re not saying the US is suoer mysterious or magical, especially compared to other countries. The point is tho, that the vast expanse of concrete and highway is its own type of horror.
I think this genera of "Modern Mythical" (what I like to call it), is super cool. A place can be sacred, can be magical, and even if you pave over it and make a super highway, that doesn't dampen the power it has, it's still there. But instead of 'the cursed forest' its now "the highway no one drives down past midnight". Its no longer "The grassy plains that never end" its "the town that you always end up circling back to, no matter how long you drive in a straight line". Power doesn't leave a place because it's been changed, that power remains and adapts to its new environment. But because the environment has changed, and humans have such short memories, we have no idea what these places are. No idea how to counter the power they have and probably just gave that power a better vehicle to wield it's self. I love the Modern Mythical because it directly shows not just the Power affecting humans, but how Humans have affected the Power. We were the ones to change and warp it, and now it is repaying us in kind and showing us what it can do with the new form we gave it.
@@diem1095 show = meh. comic = better, book = best. don't get me wrong, i liked it, but really doesn't hold a candle to the book (especially if you're lucky enough to have read it first). the official literary genre you're looking for is "magical realism" if you want to dive deeper... and after you're done with am.gods (sadly, it's a really fast read, its so damn good) goto: Mikhail Bulgakov's Master & Margarita. then suzanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), and then China Miéville's "Kraken". ENJOY! hmmm... as a throw away "post script", if you can find the motion comic "N" by Stephen King out there... it's almost as good as the comic.
I used to be an OTR truck driver. I seen some trippy stuff. The same guy appearing where I’m parking for the night just standing there looking right at me. It happened over and over across thousands of miles and dozens of states. I once picked up a single paper clip in a 53’ trailer just to deliver 1000 miles into an open field. There was a single man there. He signed and took his paper clip… just standing there holding his paper clip as I drove off. I once was driving through a small southern town and all of a sudden desert! Nothing but desert as far as the eye can see. All that I had was this one road I was on. I drove for hours and all of a sudden I see the town again. I drove into it and behind me the desert was gone. It was like it was never there.
As a Canadian, the image i associate the most with the Middle-American expanse is the water tower. Something about driving down a highway and seeing a collection of buildings and trees huddled around a water tower in the distance like a little island in a sea of farmland screams America to me visually.
I have lived in northern Wisconsin and now I live in the southern portion. I have traveled to the states around it and ya, that is a good interpretation of most local towns, a town sitting around a water tower
As someone from middle America, I’ll be it just outside of a city, when I drive away from the little epicenter of life that I’m used to, the first thing that I always notice about a place is it’s water tower. You can tell a lot about a town from its water tower, actually. Most of them tend to be some kind of domed concrete nowadays, but the most striking are definitely the old metal ones
This is something I love about America. Our weird is just THERE. Not obvious, just very subtle. I went on vacation from Georgia to Florida, and I know for a fact I passed near a dozen places I ought not have stopped at if I wanted to keep my head right. Heck, the heavenly meadery I found in the back of a trailer park was pushing it.
Can you go into detail on a few? Id love to learn of em what little can share of your glimpses. Im a florida man so Ive seen some weird stuff like a vanishing house, that took a few hours of my life, I walked up to the door and began thinking again 6 hours later, a clearing where the old 2 floor was. The flower bed gone and no evidence it ever existed.
@blindedjourneyman I lived in SC, but one night, I missed the turn I needed because I thought there was another one further down. This car cut across two lanes to whip in front of me and took a left at the next light. Where there was definitely not a road to the left. Car wasn't in the ditch. The fence was still perfectly fine. There was no evidence of a car going off the road. But my roommate saw it too. We just kinda stopped and looked at each other, then decided that we didn't need to go to the gym that night and just went home instead since there were ghost cars afoot.
@@blindedjourneyman I don’t have many examples, being brought up to know such things and avoid ‘em like they’re the family ghosts, but I do have one major one. I was in north Georgia, blue ridge mountains, Appalachia’s lowest hills. I were cuttin’ wood in a glade, chunks of an oak a hurricane’s splinter tore down. I hear’s me a groan, somethin’ like a deer’s grunt I heard a hundred times hunting in South Georgia. So I respond in kind, I does. An’ it does it again, but… wrong. I can’t quite find a way to describe it, but it’s like… wetter than a grunt oughta be; an’ it lasts a bit longer than it should. I grunt back again, and it does it again, even weirder than the last time. So I say, loudly but not shouting, into the tree line, “Now look. I’m gonna stay in here, I’m gonna finish cuttin’ this wood, and when I leave I’m gonna go out a way that ain’t towards you. We cool?” An’ I tell ya, I heard somethin’ walkin’ away after that. But beyond that, I just get senses of things. Gas stations on 431 that look recently visited but their parking is all grass. Wetlands that that seem to call for someone to explore, eager to get a grab on your waders before you know what’s happening. And I can’t forget them churches that I know in my heart of hearts ain’t had a sermon for decades upon decades. I’d reckon the Yankees got their own versions, but to my mind, the south with her long desolate roads; fields watered with sweat, tears, an’ gallons of blood; an’ sun-scorched red dirt- she’s full of spots that can only be thought of as “weird” if you value yer sanity.
Theirs such a Primeval energy to America. Europe has fairies and goblins but America has things that are scarier and subtler. Places that feel wrong despite nothing being wrong with them. Roads that just feel alive, like they’re watching you. Even our monsters feel like they’re part of reality instead of being from some magical world, almost like they’re always there and we just happen to notice once in a while.
@@Broomer52I get you. We have our share of roadside easter eggs along Route 66 like the Pink Elephant and the Ketchup Bottle, and we have some backroad urban legends like Seven Gates Of Hell down here in southern Illinois.
Reminds me of a town I turned off the interstate in the South at to get gas. The station at the exit was way too expensive so I followed the signage down the road to the next one, and found the strangest town center I've ever seen. Rows of gorgeous late 19th and early 20th century buildings like something out of an old Western film, but every single one boarded up and shuttered for what looked like decades. The only sign of life was at the 7 Eleven built into the far side of the square, parking lot overflowing with cars and store bustling with people socializing like at a house party. Leaving that almost ghost town, I didn't see any sign of life in any building again till I was back at the interstate. These broken or falling communities aren't hidden or hard to find; it's just most of us have been taught to look past them.
The place that inspired Silent Hill is in America. There was a Coal Mine under the town and an accident set the mine on fire. As far as I know it’s still burning, the roads cracked under the pressure and the town is covered in a near permanent fog of smoke
@@Broomer52 That place inspired the film version of Silent Hill, but the original game was just vaguely inspired by American towns from movies like Kindergarten Cop and such. The fog and snow in the original game are just that, but the movie added the detail of the coal fire which is still pretty awesome.
@@Broomer52 The fog of Silent Hill was originally to cover up the poor render distance of the PS1. It just happened to be so atmospheric it became a staple for the series.
Immediately happy to hear mention of Alice Isn’t Dead. Fantastic example on the “Other America”. It’s made by the Night Vale team, but played significantly more seriously.
I know exactly the feeling these stories are going for. It’s a feeling I grew up with. When I was a kid, my mom loved taking the family on road trips. We drove all across the contiguous 48 states on thousands of miles of road. And it wasn’t just the interstates either. She loved going off the beaten path. Whenever she could manage it we’d find ourselves taking detours on long stretches of old, single lane roads taking us deep into the middle of nowhere. Often times we were the only ones out there too. It was just us by ourselves on a lonely road in vast, open expanses of wilderness. It’s difficult to describe in words just how big the US can be. If you’ve only ever driven on the interstates I think it’s fair to say you likely don’t grasp the true enormity of it. There’s something missing from that experience. The interstates are direct, fast, and efficient routes. They take you across the country but not through it, if that makes sense. They’re bustling with activity and you’re never very far from other humans or signs of civilization. They’re familiar. They’re safe. They keep the lesser know parts of the country at a comfortable distance. But there are so many other roads, quiet and nearly forgotten running all across the US. They can stretch for hundreds of miles. You can travel them for hours without seeing any evidence human life, save for the road itself. Out there, all by yourself so far away that you can’t even pick up a radio station anymore, it can feel like you’re entering a different place, an alternate place. With nothing but the sound of your engine and the road ahead to occupy your thoughts, your mind can wander in this place. You might find yourself thinking things you’d never thought about before. And then, as the day grows long and the sun hangs low in the sky, seemingly out of nowhere you find that you’ve entered a small town. Or maybe what once was a town? All the buildings look run down and long since abandoned. Possibly one of the many forgotten towns from a lost era of American history. You wonder what it was that pushed the people away. But then you notice something. A single gas station still has its lights on. You decide to take the opportunity to top off your tank and maybe grab some snacks for the road since you’re not sure when your next chance will be. As you stand by your car pumping the gas, your eyes start to take account of your surroundings. It’s a little difficult to tell just how big this town was. None of the roads are straight, trees block your lines of sight, and the sun begins to set. But the longer you look the more things you notice. On a side path you notice that a couple of the houses turn on their lights. In the distance you hear the tires of a car driving on an unseen dirt road. There are subtle signs of activity around that you would never have paid attention to in your normal hometown. This town hasn’t been abandoned, at least not entirely. Some still cling to this place, tucked away, hidden from prying eyes. Just as you begin to wonder why anyone would still be here in this almost ghost town you see for the first time in hours another human. He gives you a dirty look as he walks by. And in that moment you know that this place is not meant for you. You are just a traveler passing through and you should not linger. The sun sets as you leave the town. You drive off into the night for the next hundred miles of your journey. The sky is filled with more stars than you’ve ever seen in your entire life. And before long your mind begins to wander again.
Wow. That was a very vivid way of describing that unsettling feeling of being alone on the road hundreds of miles away from civilization. And honestly that feeling would definitely explain why since I was a little kid I've always been so afraid of being stuck on one of those roads after the car breaks down.
That was a beautiful description of what I find the most appealing in road trips. I live in NM, where everything is at a distance, and I travel about 80 miles a day for work. I’m happier working in a rural village outside the city of ABQ, the traffic makes time about the same, but there is something about the travel, between worlds and communities, that I find alluring and I enjoy it.
As a resident of the north western US, I must say, there are frequent pieces of nature dotted all over. Or rather, our towns and cities are dotted around nature.
Yeah, I used to live in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, and there was the same thing of towns infrequently dotted about the countryside. As a kid I always wondered what secrets the woods had.
Not exactly American but all of these stories remind me of the game "The Exit 8." A relatively small game about walking forward, entering the hall to exit 8, entering the hall to exit 8, entering the hall to exit 8, entering the... no that can't be right. It explains itself better than I ever could anyways
Alice Isn't Dead is my favorite spooky podcast and I'm so happy that it was mentioned first. That coffin episode is one of the most unsettling things I've heard.
I listened to The Dark Somnium's rendition of "The Left-Right Game" while road-tripping from North Dakota to the West Coast. Fantastic way to listen to it.
Gosh I love this genre. Some other exceptional media I’d put into this category would be: Over the Garden Wall, The Electric State, Welcome to Night Vale, and Night in the Woods. Each has this unique take on the “Other America” genre. How they manage to capture that feeling of the personal and secluded ghost stories that often remain hidden to the world. The hauntings that few eyes get to see and fewer yet can understand. “Somewhere lost in the clouded annals of history, Lies a place that few have seen. A mysterious place, called The Unknown. Where long-forgotten stories are revealed to those who travel through the wood.”
To me it felt creepy and for the rest of the video it felt like it was supposed to be over, but it just kept going I think this was a good choice to kind of put us in, that's ghost story, headspace, or maybe it was just me
Dude Alice Isn't Dead is so good. Every once in a while I listen to it again. If you haven't listened to it, highly recommend it. Though I prefer the podcast version to the audio book
@@yumkas Season 1 of Alice Isnt Dead might just be me favourite story ever and the book was a massive disappointment. I havent even finish it. I wasnt also too keen on seasons 2 and 3 exactly because they have lost some of that roadtrip atmosphere, and focused on the central story.
As an actual Truck driver, I can tell you for a fact there IS a "Other" America! In fact if you sit down sith ANY "Traveler of the Roads" be it a Trucker, hitchhikers, A Roma. Or hobo Drifter...they will ALL have multiple weird & unexplained Tales & stories. I honestly didn't believe my Trainer 6 yrs ago when I started, now I got my own stories & encounters to tell 😅. (Like the Dullahan i encounter on occasion on I-65 going North thru Tennessee toward Kentucky. )
Its always either near or next to Kentucky or in the Mojave desert when you find this other side of home... Hell you have pockets in Delaware where you can walk in some towns and just.... feel the presence of things that either tolerate our presence and allow us to build our ever growing pockets of civilization. At the same time sensing the growing irritation of those things, the exact feeling you get when you hear a dog softly growling, threatening to get louder and meaner the more someone else pokes and prods at it.
You have to figure, if other worlds do exist out there, our world is probably the horror story to one of them. In their world, they're telling scary stories about our world like it's a creepy, unsettling place that doesn't obey the laws they are used to. They're probably scaring each other with stories about things we consider completely normal
DoodLetMeGo recently made a short touching on this. What if the horrific monster some otherworldly denizens summoned to do their bidding was, in fact, an ordinary human?
Having grown up in the rural southern US, there is something so forlorn and sad about the place. But also, something to honest. Behind the scheming politicians and amoral megacorps and duplicitous preachers, there are people who turn to them because they don’t know what else to do. Kentucky Route 0 speaks to me on a personal level.
Calling it honest is hilarious. "we don't have crime like in the cities" (actually just doesn't report it most of the time), not to mention all the hoaxes done for attention/tourism dollars. Honesty isn't the same thing as simplicity.
@@Vaeldarg Not in that sense, oh no. I’ll be the first to tell you that many southerners are liars and backstabbers. But just as many are scared and ignorant. I want to leave this place as much the next queer person, but I also hope that, maybe one day, they’ll be able to stop being afraid of change. I probably did misspeak, and honest probably wasn’t the correct word.
Tens of thousands of years ago, people first came to North America is groups, from a few different places, at a few different times. While they brought some mythology with them, they would forge new mythology about the world around them. When the Europeans invaded, many of these mythologies were either lost to time, or simply ignored by the non-native peoples. Much of the country has been forcibly changed. But there has always been the undercurrent that spawned the ancient mythologies. The tales of the forests you don't go into, or the plains with no end have morphed into the Backrooms, and Lost Highways. Country Music is rife with ghost stories across multiple generations, both of beneficial and harmful spirits. And people are still crafting these wonderful tales. And there are some truly weird things going on. Like those times when a sport scar shows up in the rear view mirror, getting ready to pass, then you look to your side-view mirror, and it's gone. Looking back to rear view mirror, it's gone. But there were no turnoffs. No crossroads. Just a long stretch of highway. No evidence of a crash behind you. Nothing in the news. And perhaps in an alternate reality, the driver of that car is telling about the time they passed this old pickup truck, but when they checked the rear view after passing, it wasn't there....
“Beneath the glamour of Hollywood, the slick technology of Silicon Valley… a different, quieter [California] lurks. It’s not easy to find. It’s hidden away because it is gritty and uncomfortable:” … Bakersfield.
Love the channel! Shared you with an English professor friend and she shared with her students, thought you might like to know. Keep it up, little robot!
I loved the nosleep posts about the national park ranger and his stories. This is something quite unique about america too, being so big that you have a very vast nature preserves where you can imagine all sorts of things happening. They are really cool and gave me creeps for days. If you see stairs in the woods just standing there by themselves never go up them, never look at them, never acknowledge them and try not to speak about them.
As someone who drives to a factory every evening to spend 12 hours a night most nights a week, I feel that sadness quite a bit. It's striking, at times, how I'm just some ethereal other to those passing by on the road, passing by a warehouse they'll never know the purpose of, full of people they'll never know like me and my coworkers. To them, we may as well be ghosts, haunting a building they'll never be inside, one of hundreds if not thousands of other buildings I see myself in my travels back and forth. It's a world of ghosts out there, ones that live, in passing, as we see them on the sidewalk, walk by in a store, but return to liminality as one of us crosses the threshold of observation. There are billions of them out there, those ghosts, haunting this planet, enacting things I can never see, operating systems I'll never know about, living lives I'll never understand. A sonderous, harrowing thought during one of those nights where it's my turn to play the ghost of others.
I live in the midwest and have to drive in a car to get to most places. Urban sprawl nightmare. Not exactly convenient, but it’s what we get for living in a car dependent capitalistic culture.
A game that manages to encapsulate this vibe perfectly was Pacific Drive. It plays off of traditional american rural myths like bigfoot and government conspiracies, but places ypu with only an old 90s station wagon as your last line of survival - and means of escape, with the entire game centered around the horror of a place where everything constantly changes and yet remains the same as the dense woods of the Pacific Northwest always have been. You're a traveler trying to get out of there, forced to commute through dangerous landscapes and a landscape that has been irreparably and constantly changed for better or for worse.
I love the hidden/corrupt magic of America, specifically when located in the Midwest. It’s a fascinating type of story and world that I just keep dipping into again and again when I write. I think it’s because America’s melting pot type culture creates this mosaic of things that crash and meld with each other. Sometimes it ends up coming across as uncanny or eerie, or it completely corrupts into something malicious. The back ways and shadowy corners of America give the finest setting for horror and monsters to roam.
It's deeply compelling when done right, but I don't like how it can insinuate that all of "Flyover Country" is this kind of "shadowy corner of America."
The stories of serial killers going undiscovered for sometimes years or even decades probably doesn't help the idea of rural America not being as safe as claimed.
America is no longer the New World but it managed to keep the Mystique. The Magic in America is very unlike the Magic of Europe because it always feels very Old World, Primeval even. Theirs Monsters that aren’t simply nature but more like they’re woven into reality, alternate worlds are familiar yet wrong like an unnerving dream, nothing about the Magic of America feels like it’s separate from us.
America is no longer the New World but it managed to keep the Mystique. The Magic in America is very unlike the Magic of Europe because it always feels very Old World, Primeval even. Theirs Monsters that aren’t simply nature but more like they’re woven into reality, alternate worlds are familiar yet wrong like an unnerving dream, nothing about the Magic of America feels like it’s separate from us. It’s like these things have always been here and we just occasionally notice it. We don’t have fairies and goblins, we have beings that are twisted and contorted, things that almost look like us or like animals we know, we don’t have lands of fairies, we have dream like depictions of where we already live. We have monsters that change shape based on the skins they wear, monsters that are born from hunger, monsters that were created by hate, some made by desperation, deformed animals, alternate worlds that are just your home town that only ever feels slightly wrong, woods that feel alive and hungry, stretches of road that feel just as unnervingly alive.
@@VinemapleAgreed, and it’s telling he characterized it as a great setting for horror specifically. No magical journeys or heroic quests for the Heartland! Oh no, it’s all Slenderman and ghouls out there.
These stories are just so good. There’s just something about a story where something weird and unexplained happens and then it just moves on. There’s no magic to explain, no villain to defeat and no world to save. Something completely unexpected just happened. Like in Groundhogs day. It just happens.
I hope the audio overlap was intentional, because it would kinda summarize the video perfectly. It’s a random bit of strangeness that otherwise would have gone unnoticed, had we not clicked on this video.
‘Other America’ is, in a way, and at its root, not just a haunting of America by the American Dream, it’s a fantastical lens taken to the unacknowledged but nonetheless impactful systemic mistakes and ideological pitfalls that led to the death of the American Dream in the first place. Possibly the most haunting aspect of the concept, to me at least, is when the maybes and what-ifs and might-have-beens granted by the warped sort of hindsight give us little pondering glimpses of how it might have actually worked out… if only things had been different, and the mistakes made never were… only for a warped shriek of the state of things to come rumbling back in like that next car or truck on the highway.
I guess that’s why such stories don’t resonate with me personally. I’ve seen the American Dream come true too many times to believe it’s a lie. That’s the thing about an open promise. You can find as many examples of it not “being kept” as there are grains of sand on a beach. But you only need one to prove it’s at least not a total lie or delusion. Let alone how many times I’ve seen it done with different families including my own.
I have seen this Other America, it's right down the street to my house. I live on the Northeast side of America, so many times, I see old historic buildings next to fancy new clean-white houses. Along with this, the town I'm in is surrounded by farmland and expressways, and just down the street from my house is a forest with dirt roads going to houses that lie inside them, and even an empty field with a fence surrounding it. Down another street is the expressway to get to your local Walmart or ShopRite. Down another street, you'd see a great big field with a house in the middle. It's a strange experience to see all of these things when walking down the street, but at the same time, I can't help but feel mystified when I go down near the train tracks and see an empty stone building with broken windows next to an up and running factory, or a seemingly abandoned construction site in the middle of the woods. I feel like that sense of "something was supposed to start here, but it never did" gives this Other America it's feeling. It's like everything here is abandoned, even if it's lived in
Loved that reference to Route 0. The atmosphere is very rooted in Americana: ranches, static, bears. You've got to walk it by yourself, so I'll stop there. I love how modern Americana dark fiction goes back to looping. Thinking about the same thing over and over, while it changes with or without you.
You should look into "Welcome to Night Vale". It's another podcast, and it has many similarities and almost certainly touches upon the American Otherworld concept. But there's more to it than that. A way of writing horror and humor that's very unique, yet still has hints of the styles that form it. It plays with concepts of the supernatural and preternatural... and with how real people and communities might live their lives around those concepts realized. Personally, I find the deadpan hyperbolic surreal humor to be both highly amusing and deeply soothing somehow.
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unicode lets you do some wild stuff. google "zalgo text generator" ḵ̸̢̫̝͉̭̀̋̌̓̒̒͜͠ͅe̵̮̺̗̖̔͆̃̈́ȩ̴̢̥̱͉̞̇̌̂̐͗̕͜͝ͅp̷̦̱̣̞̅ ̸͔̀͝ͅȋ̸̢̡͓͔̫̰͘t̵͉̯͚̣͖͆̃͜ ̸͉̻̬̼̙͓͈̝͗̔w̷̖͎̙̻̻̱͗̈́ȩ̷͇̼̘̦̿̋ï̴̪̓̚r̵͖̮̿̃̀̇̿̑͊d̵̡̮̄͑
I recognized the first line of this video as Alice Isn't Dead almost instantly, that episode of the podcast was always my favorite and has haunted me for years
It's not just the sense of being trapped that makes the American otherworld so uncomfortable, it's also the people in it that seem to be desperately clinging to the promise of the American Dream, even though they all know it's a long broken promise. They go about they're lives like nothing's wrong, willfully ignorant of the at times nightmaresh world they're trapped in. The travelers, for lack of a better term, can feel something's wrong but don't really wanna confront it so they just drift further and further into the otherworld.
I guess that’s why such stories don’t resonate with me personally. I’ve seen the American Dream come true too many times to believe it’s a lie. That’s the thing about an open promise. You can find as many examples of it not “being kept” as there are grains of sand on a beach. But you only need one to prove it’s at least not a total lie or delusion. Let alone how many times I’ve seen it done with different families including my own.
I wish you guys would talk about the Magnus Archives! Creepy stuff, amazing plots hidden within plots, eldritch entities, paranoid/murdered archivists, body snatching, falling through an endless sky, etc.! You guys would *absolutely* love it!
@@vishanteeRelevant to the overarching plot "Page Turner" & "First Aid." Gerard Keay is really interesting. Kid growing up in an occult-rich environment that he understands is NOT doing him, or anyone, any good, and he kinda discretely crusading against the coming of whatever it is these weird cultists are trying to call forth. (As far as I know, of course, as I could be wrong). Makes me think of people descended from lines of abuse (physical, psychological, sexual, substance, etc.) and going, "The cycle ends here."
I once took a wrong turn going to a local tourist attraction, and ended up going through a rock quarry, a forest, and several other strangely wild-feeling places before returning to the highway, which, despite being to the correct side of, I somehow managed to cross an uneven number of times in a wide circle before, on the fourth loop, my destination showed up in a place it wasn't before.
I'm a Kentucky native. Ive always lived within a mile of a US Interstate. I-71 in Kentucky, I-65 in Indiana, I-15 in Nevada and I-95 in Maryland. I've driven across the United States by car around 6 times. The last time I drove my family from San Diego to Baltimore. In every place there is a lot that is broken and uncomfortable, but there is so much that is beautiful too. I miss all of my old homes. I get lost on Google Maps sometimes looking at old familiar places, remembing all the good people and their stories. This is a great video, and i would be lying if i said it didn't stir something in me about "The Other" America I've had the privilege to experience. And... I'm looking forward to playing Kentucky Route 0.
When I was younger, a cop came to our door and asked for an address, the number right above ours, that house didn’t exist, we later looked that address up and the satellite map put a marker in the center of the road in front of our house… that was always rly weird to me
one small correction, the US wasnt built for cars, at least not for the most part, it was bulldozed for the car though, you can see the before and after pics and its honestly kinda haunting
America was built and is still built around railroads. Commerce is the backbone of civilization. Overcrowded hives of human bugs who refuse to establish new hives just don't see the millions of miles of railroads barely out of their sight.
This mystical side of Americana is something I’ve been obsessed with since childhood. Does it even exist? If it does, where do I find it? Why are our heroes explorers and builders and not swordsmen and dragon slayers? These questions and more have really haunted me as a man who loves fantasy. Worlds of magic and knights and great evils to defeat.
Dark Americana ( or American gothic) has to be my new favorite obsession what with family road trips being so easy to relate to, being how ingrained into the culture driving is
There should probably be a Jumpscare suburban horror isekai story based on being transported via an old television (tv) to an otherworld mirroring earth. just an idea, take it or leave it...loosely based on being interrupted while watching a show on the old TV by the end credits of the show before being isekaied..
This episode reminded me precisely why I love this channel so much. Always exposes me to the most interesting, haunting stories imaginable. Thank you, Tale Foundry.
I truly do think that otherworldly strangeness is inherent to America as a country. Things like Mothman, Jack Parsons rituals, Sightings and the encounters with The Men In Black all echo a single feeling. The feeling that we’re in a place that was already inhabited and what was once here isn’t content with being forgotten.
I've had some unusual jobs and traveled a great deal. I have one story in mind today. It was 3 or 4 in the morning at an empty little dinner in a blizzard, didn't see any headlights before the front bell rang. In walks a large man in jeans and a leather jacket. His long dark hair and beard are frozen. Not a word about the storm just sits at the bar. Waitress gets his order then he just quietly waits. Gets his food (no coffee) and eats quickly like he has some where to be. When no one's looking the front bell rings again. The waitress goes to greet a new customer but no one's there. The ice guys gone. At his spot on the bar there's $40. Out side there are no new tire marks just the ones from when the waitress came in, and no footprints past the salted sidewalk. Now could the guy have walked from the road to the sidewalk fallowing the tire tracks, yes. Could he have made it back the same way and out of sight between the bell and the waitress looking out side, maybe. The real questions are how long was he out there for his hair to freeze, and where was he in a hurry to get to on foot.
For those who couldn't understand the overlaid audio at 14:05 and want to, I think it said: and uses them as "ghostly" (*something I didn't catch*) "worker slaves. What happens to the bodies you ask? Well, they've got to make their signature whiskey somehow!"
It's great if you like constant interruptions and commentary on the story as it goes, which I certainly do, the second time. There's other readings that are great and just have the story by itself.
This video has managed to _perfectly_ encapsulate my feelings on this subject. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to more clearly see the sort of beauty in the parts of this modern life most see as “boring”, I guess, and this video has actually helped me begin to articulate why. Honestly, this sort of “American otherworld” is a _huge_ part of why I love Percy Jackson. The magic isn’t only found in the deep, out-of-the-way wilderness, or in ancient ruins, or a literal other dimension. I mean, yes, it’s there, too, but Percy Jackson focuses on the magic hiding in the everyday parts of the modern world. The hotel and casino on the Vegas strip that’s actually a magical time-trap designed to make you never want to leave, the secret 600th floor of the Empire State Building that takes you to Olympus, the fact that _Hermes invented the Internet,_ the various historical figures that were actually demigods, the demigods and monsters still secretly living among mortals, I could go on and on. I feel like it’s the best kind of “secret magic world” setting.
There's something romantic about an American road trip. Passing so many people who you'll never meet with their own fully fleshed out lives. So many personal struggles. I love Alice Isn't Dead. Stephen King novels also evoke the American other world. Even when they're set in fictional places, they feel American.
If I had a nickel for every female protagonist in a ‘Another America’ story named Alice, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it’s happened twice
I'm so thankful that my parents/grandparents decided to raise our family in a small town way outside the bigger cities. My childhood was full of playing in the woods and being in nature. As a teen it got boring but as an adult now with children grown of my own, I am back to thankful. We are surrounded by pretty good people with not much violence at all to speak of. Going through cities today makes me anxious, more so than ever just because of the level of violence today in these places. To me, the city is more spooky than the country any day!
I think it is the idea you a trapped in an abusive relationship with your own country you have no hopes of escaping only to make due with what you have
@@abydosianchulac2 Not to mention there own skeletons in thier closets Same shit just different shade of brown America's biggest sin is the fact they pretend that they are any different
You might as well be saying “it’s too haaaaard!” Is the suffering of working your way towards a move worse than simply living in the US? If no, then get to work and I wish you the best. If yes, then stop complaining and ESPECIALLY don’t try to ruin or change things that everyone else can tolerate or even likes. Of course there is nuance to each individual scenario, but if you’re going to make the blanket statement about an entire country, don’t bash me for making a blanket statement on how to get away from it. If third worlders can leave behind possessions, family, and risk their lives to leave, and living in the US is SOOOO intolerable, then just find a way.
Hey there! Thank you for introducing me to Alice isn't dead. This vid got me curious to hear what the series is about. Now I'm on it's third season and it's a phenomenal series, I can't wait to finish it. Again, thanks.
14:04 Is there something I am missing here? I've read through the comments and keep seeing something about some audio bug or glitch at this time stamp. The only thing I hear that seems off is the narrator taking a larger pause in this line "...uses them as ... ghostly ... office worker slaves".
I grew up with joining my stepdad and mom on trips up and down this side of the Rockies making deliveries, and honestly, I remember hearing stories late at night while he and my mom used the CB radio to talk to the other drivers. One that sticks out is the stereotypical story of the woman standing on the side of the road - only this time there were multiple witnesses because my dad's track was part of a small convoy of 4 trucks, and every person in each of the trucks saw the same woman, and saw her just poof out of existence. There was also a full moon, and nothing else for miles in all directions; just flat empty terrain. Still gives me shivers just thinking about it.
this reminded me of the musical "Assassins" where we follow that assassins (successful or not) of the U.S. presidents and see America through their eyes
I recently left home to go to university (I live in the U.S.) and I don’t come from a big city or anything (suburbs i guess you could call it?) but the town my university is in is a really small town. It has a population of 3,000 people (not including college students) it’s so strange to walk in the town or talk to people who live here. It has a street called Main Street and it looks like a tourist town waay past its prime. A lot of the buildings on broken or boarded up. There are murals painted on some buildings that are super faded and cracked. My favorite is this little book store full of the most interesting books! They have a naturalist section which has all sorts of field guides and identifier books. They have supplies for writing and sending letters different kinds of envelopes and stamps. I always find the strangest thought provoking stories there. The whole place as kind of a quiet respect to it. Like everyone’s waiting and watching for something to happen. It’s definitely a ghost town.
I’m always so glad this channel exists. Teaching so much, exploring so many ideas, fuelling creativity in the best possible way. Tale foundry is astounding.
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Mey
Cool video.
@@edrozenrozen9600 yep. Randomly played the outro
@ 14:13 abouts, you mixed your outro audio in with your regular audio, and now it's overlapping.
Should probably fix that.
☝🤓Umm actually, Bonnie does not miss the turn, she runs away in the middle of the night after they stop her getting disintegrated, but she is too eager to go, too obsessed with the thought of that mystical and perfect land known as Wintry Bay
I spent 10 years as a long haul trucker. One of the first things you notice when seeing the USA from that side is the... sameness. Freeways and loading docks look roughly the same in Montana as they do Atlanta. It messes with your sense of distance. Sit in the drivers seat and follow the blue line for a few days, then go to a loading dock. Did I even move??
I grew up in an RV travelling the country. My experience was about the same.
Whenever I tell people I've seen all 50 states, they always ask, what was the most beautiful place? Which one stands out. Honestly, I could hardly tell the difference for most of it. We drove in a random direction every day, and I didn't meaningfully understand where I was or where I was going. It all looked mostly the same.
There’s a story there, if you want to write it.
There’s a sadness in that, isn’t there? 3,800,000 square miles of sameness. The same roads, the same businesses, the same houses.
It's loading the same assets like some uninspired Skyrim dungeon.
i feel it’s sort of the same for the US and canada. seeing dash cam videos of highways and cities from the US, you can almost believe you might have been on that very highway or city until the city name is definitely not a city you’ve been to or a highway number from your country.
I dropped my phone right before the audio was overlayed and thought i messed something up💀💀
same, i was so confused, lmao
Glad I’m not the only one who noticed
I wondered if it was intentional for a second. I don't think it was at this point, I expected it to loop around if it was.
@@victorvaldez8869 it is. he was talking about slaves and youtube doesnt like that
I’m not too sure it was intentional hun, too long and loud in my opinion, especially for a single word replacement
14:06 scared the hell out of my lol
Also been like, did I leave a second tab open with separte video? XD
I wonder if that was a mistake, or it it was meant to be like that?
Jump scare 😨
SAME LOL 😭
@@spriteplug2286 I hope it was a mistake and that they fix it. It makes it really hard to understand what he's saying. :(
“A long haul trucker delivers a single coffin to a factory by the sea and watches its owner climb into it”
One of these days someone’s gotta make a Tale Foundry Out Of Context
Love your channel, shared it with my brother who loves writing and he’s gotten some really good ideas for the story he’s working on
Alice Isn’t Dead Part 1 Chapter 4 “The Factory by the Sea” is amazing
The moment I heard that I was like "I understood that reference" XD
From the thumbnail, I thought this video was about Kentucky Route Zero, but then I opened it and heard that and was overjoyed. Alice Isn't Dead is my favourite fiction podcast of all time ❤
Ima make this now
@@hannahdawg6829 SAME! Great podcast.
I swear, it's a coinflip on whether or not these things sound like an SCP.
Yeah, I was just thinking this sounded like a SCP tale.
The... Foundry, itself, is an SCP. Thus your feeling about this makes a lot of sense.
technically everything unatural is an SCP, that is the point of SCP. a "place" where every supernatural story is real.
Givin how vast scp goes, I would not be surprised if they have worked together in the past
Well, that makes sense, SCPs are these sorts of stories, just all put together in one universe
As a foreigner who lived in the US for a few months, this is what it feels like
Roads, cars, and strange places in between where humanity tries its best to make sense
A lost cause if I've ever heard one.
America is no longer the New World but it managed to keep the Mystique. The Magic in America is very unlike the Magic of Europe because it always feels very Old World, Primeval even. Theirs Monsters that aren’t simply nature but more like they’re woven into reality, alternate worlds are familiar yet wrong like an unnerving dream, nothing about the Magic of America feels like it’s separate from us. Theirs no Land of Fairies, just the place we live twisted in ways that feel wrong but can never exactly place. We don’t have Goblins just twisted versions of people and animals. Monsters born from hunger, monsters that hide in another persons skin, deformed animals that take people in the dead of night to fates unknown, forests and woods that feel alive and hungry and streets that feel just as unnervingly alive. It’s like it’s always been here but you only occasionally notice.
@@Broomer52”four creepy hidden truths behind popular scary stories”
I recommend that video to you specifically. I particularly liked the part that contrasts English horror settings with the settings of horror stories that take place in the US
@@Broomer52 I am BEGGING people who say shit like this to remember FOR A SECOND that the US is a colonizer state. People have lived on this continent for millennia in all the "wrong and twisted" places--places that European colonizers didn't understand because they aren't agricultural or industrial centers with feudalism derived governments. The "monsters born from hunger" and "monsters that hide in another person's (sic) skin" (that's not what a skinwalker is, ffs) are just "Christians hear about a pagan god and decide it must be the Devil" for the modern age. Oh the US is haunted? Weird how it's built on allllll those Native Burial Grounds. I'm sure it's just coincidence.
@cam4636 so profound. We've never that tale before. The 1st nation peoples mastered the art of colonization and genocide well before the pale face. There was no group hugging and kumbaya singing. Remember the blood on Aztec temples, the obsidian knifes used to remove still beating hearts was made by native hands, and the oceans of blood that still stains those temples, is native blood. Not all went willing to the slaughter.
To quote Tumblr user Gallusrostromegalus:
“The intense and permanent haunting of a land upon which countess horrors have been visited, and that is too large and wild for us to really comprehend is probably the most intense and universal American feeling.”
Russians: we're not do different, you and I
Meanwhile, the entire continent of Africa laughs at the US going through its emo teenager phase.
I mean, Americas land hasn't seen nearly the amount of atrocities that the land "across the pond" has experienced. From UK to Japan, Russia to the tip of Africa...yeah, that level of "permanent haunting" is laughing at north and south America...
@@KristinChoruby No kidding right!!
@@KristinChoruby I dont think you re getting the point. We re not saying the US is suoer mysterious or magical, especially compared to other countries. The point is tho, that the vast expanse of concrete and highway is its own type of horror.
I think this genera of "Modern Mythical" (what I like to call it), is super cool. A place can be sacred, can be magical, and even if you pave over it and make a super highway, that doesn't dampen the power it has, it's still there. But instead of 'the cursed forest' its now "the highway no one drives down past midnight". Its no longer "The grassy plains that never end" its "the town that you always end up circling back to, no matter how long you drive in a straight line". Power doesn't leave a place because it's been changed, that power remains and adapts to its new environment. But because the environment has changed, and humans have such short memories, we have no idea what these places are. No idea how to counter the power they have and probably just gave that power a better vehicle to wield it's self. I love the Modern Mythical because it directly shows not just the Power affecting humans, but how Humans have affected the Power. We were the ones to change and warp it, and now it is repaying us in kind and showing us what it can do with the new form we gave it.
i love this so much
Good comment, worth the read
read neil gaiman american gods
@@wallacewilliams535 oh, I have it on my book shelf now. I plan to read it very soon. I loved season 1 and 2 of the show (I havent seen the rest yet)
@@diem1095 show = meh. comic = better, book = best.
don't get me wrong, i liked it, but really doesn't hold a candle to the book (especially if you're lucky enough to have read it first). the official literary genre you're looking for is "magical realism" if you want to dive deeper... and after you're done with am.gods (sadly, it's a really fast read, its so damn good) goto: Mikhail Bulgakov's Master & Margarita. then suzanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), and then China Miéville's "Kraken".
ENJOY!
hmmm... as a throw away "post script", if you can find the motion comic "N" by Stephen King out there... it's almost as good as the comic.
I used to be an OTR truck driver. I seen some trippy stuff. The same guy appearing where I’m parking for the night just standing there looking right at me. It happened over and over across thousands of miles and dozens of states.
I once picked up a single paper clip in a 53’ trailer just to deliver 1000 miles into an open field. There was a single man there. He signed and took his paper clip… just standing there holding his paper clip as I drove off.
I once was driving through a small southern town and all of a sudden desert! Nothing but desert as far as the eye can see. All that I had was this one road I was on. I drove for hours and all of a sudden I see the town again. I drove into it and behind me the desert was gone. It was like it was never there.
you should write a book about these
that time you accidentally stumbled into a secret government experimentation area
Wow that first one actually sounds like The Hitchhiker from the Mercury Theater of the air genuinely creepy
I'd read a book or a blog if you choose to write one.
Mr boss forsure.
As a Canadian, the image i associate the most with the Middle-American expanse is the water tower. Something about driving down a highway and seeing a collection of buildings and trees huddled around a water tower in the distance like a little island in a sea of farmland screams America to me visually.
There's actually a book called Godless, which is all about kids starting a religion based around the water tower in their small town
@@jordanloux3883 thank you for adding to my tbr shelf
I have lived in northern Wisconsin and now I live in the southern portion. I have traveled to the states around it and ya, that is a good interpretation of most local towns, a town sitting around a water tower
As someone from middle America, I’ll be it just outside of a city, when I drive away from the little epicenter of life that I’m used to, the first thing that I always notice about a place is it’s water tower. You can tell a lot about a town from its water tower, actually. Most of them tend to be some kind of domed concrete nowadays, but the most striking are definitely the old metal ones
Especially in an episode like this one, 14:05 truly made me think maybe I'm actually travelling to the Other America and losing my mind.
I just came to the comments to see if anyone else noticed that moment it threw me for a loop
@@ValianceGames yeah same, seems like everyone is talking about it lmao
same. it scared me
This is something I love about America. Our weird is just THERE. Not obvious, just very subtle. I went on vacation from Georgia to Florida, and I know for a fact I passed near a dozen places I ought not have stopped at if I wanted to keep my head right. Heck, the heavenly meadery I found in the back of a trailer park was pushing it.
Can you go into detail on a few? Id love to learn of em what little can share of your glimpses. Im a florida man so Ive seen some weird stuff like a vanishing house, that took a few hours of my life, I walked up to the door and began thinking again 6 hours later, a clearing where the old 2 floor was. The flower bed gone and no evidence it ever existed.
@blindedjourneyman I lived in SC, but one night, I missed the turn I needed because I thought there was another one further down. This car cut across two lanes to whip in front of me and took a left at the next light. Where there was definitely not a road to the left. Car wasn't in the ditch. The fence was still perfectly fine. There was no evidence of a car going off the road. But my roommate saw it too. We just kinda stopped and looked at each other, then decided that we didn't need to go to the gym that night and just went home instead since there were ghost cars afoot.
@@blindedjourneyman I don’t have many examples, being brought up to know such things and avoid ‘em like they’re the family ghosts, but I do have one major one.
I was in north Georgia, blue ridge mountains, Appalachia’s lowest hills. I were cuttin’ wood in a glade, chunks of an oak a hurricane’s splinter tore down. I hear’s me a groan, somethin’ like a deer’s grunt I heard a hundred times hunting in South Georgia. So I respond in kind, I does. An’ it does it again, but… wrong. I can’t quite find a way to describe it, but it’s like… wetter than a grunt oughta be; an’ it lasts a bit longer than it should. I grunt back again, and it does it again, even weirder than the last time. So I say, loudly but not shouting, into the tree line, “Now look. I’m gonna stay in here, I’m gonna finish cuttin’ this wood, and when I leave I’m gonna go out a way that ain’t towards you. We cool?”
An’ I tell ya, I heard somethin’ walkin’ away after that.
But beyond that, I just get senses of things. Gas stations on 431 that look recently visited but their parking is all grass. Wetlands that that seem to call for someone to explore, eager to get a grab on your waders before you know what’s happening. And I can’t forget them churches that I know in my heart of hearts ain’t had a sermon for decades upon decades.
I’d reckon the Yankees got their own versions, but to my mind, the south with her long desolate roads; fields watered with sweat, tears, an’ gallons of blood; an’ sun-scorched red dirt- she’s full of spots that can only be thought of as “weird” if you value yer sanity.
Theirs such a Primeval energy to America. Europe has fairies and goblins but America has things that are scarier and subtler. Places that feel wrong despite nothing being wrong with them. Roads that just feel alive, like they’re watching you. Even our monsters feel like they’re part of reality instead of being from some magical world, almost like they’re always there and we just happen to notice once in a while.
@@Broomer52I get you. We have our share of roadside easter eggs along Route 66 like the Pink Elephant and the Ketchup Bottle, and we have some backroad urban legends like Seven Gates Of Hell down here in southern Illinois.
Reminds me of a town I turned off the interstate in the South at to get gas. The station at the exit was way too expensive so I followed the signage down the road to the next one, and found the strangest town center I've ever seen. Rows of gorgeous late 19th and early 20th century buildings like something out of an old Western film, but every single one boarded up and shuttered for what looked like decades. The only sign of life was at the 7 Eleven built into the far side of the square, parking lot overflowing with cars and store bustling with people socializing like at a house party. Leaving that almost ghost town, I didn't see any sign of life in any building again till I was back at the interstate.
These broken or falling communities aren't hidden or hard to find; it's just most of us have been taught to look past them.
The place that inspired Silent Hill is in America. There was a Coal Mine under the town and an accident set the mine on fire. As far as I know it’s still burning, the roads cracked under the pressure and the town is covered in a near permanent fog of smoke
@@Broomer52 That place inspired the film version of Silent Hill, but the original game was just vaguely inspired by American towns from movies like Kindergarten Cop and such. The fog and snow in the original game are just that, but the movie added the detail of the coal fire which is still pretty awesome.
@@Broomer52
The fog of Silent Hill was originally to cover up the poor render distance of the PS1. It just happened to be so atmospheric it became a staple for the series.
Immediately happy to hear mention of Alice Isn’t Dead. Fantastic example on the “Other America”. It’s made by the Night Vale team, but played significantly more seriously.
I know exactly the feeling these stories are going for. It’s a feeling I grew up with. When I was a kid, my mom loved taking the family on road trips. We drove all across the contiguous 48 states on thousands of miles of road. And it wasn’t just the interstates either. She loved going off the beaten path. Whenever she could manage it we’d find ourselves taking detours on long stretches of old, single lane roads taking us deep into the middle of nowhere. Often times we were the only ones out there too. It was just us by ourselves on a lonely road in vast, open expanses of wilderness.
It’s difficult to describe in words just how big the US can be. If you’ve only ever driven on the interstates I think it’s fair to say you likely don’t grasp the true enormity of it. There’s something missing from that experience. The interstates are direct, fast, and efficient routes. They take you across the country but not through it, if that makes sense. They’re bustling with activity and you’re never very far from other humans or signs of civilization. They’re familiar. They’re safe. They keep the lesser know parts of the country at a comfortable distance.
But there are so many other roads, quiet and nearly forgotten running all across the US. They can stretch for hundreds of miles. You can travel them for hours without seeing any evidence human life, save for the road itself. Out there, all by yourself so far away that you can’t even pick up a radio station anymore, it can feel like you’re entering a different place, an alternate place. With nothing but the sound of your engine and the road ahead to occupy your thoughts, your mind can wander in this place. You might find yourself thinking things you’d never thought about before. And then, as the day grows long and the sun hangs low in the sky, seemingly out of nowhere you find that you’ve entered a small town. Or maybe what once was a town? All the buildings look run down and long since abandoned. Possibly one of the many forgotten towns from a lost era of American history. You wonder what it was that pushed the people away. But then you notice something. A single gas station still has its lights on. You decide to take the opportunity to top off your tank and maybe grab some snacks for the road since you’re not sure when your next chance will be. As you stand by your car pumping the gas, your eyes start to take account of your surroundings. It’s a little difficult to tell just how big this town was. None of the roads are straight, trees block your lines of sight, and the sun begins to set. But the longer you look the more things you notice. On a side path you notice that a couple of the houses turn on their lights. In the distance you hear the tires of a car driving on an unseen dirt road. There are subtle signs of activity around that you would never have paid attention to in your normal hometown. This town hasn’t been abandoned, at least not entirely. Some still cling to this place, tucked away, hidden from prying eyes. Just as you begin to wonder why anyone would still be here in this almost ghost town you see for the first time in hours another human. He gives you a dirty look as he walks by. And in that moment you know that this place is not meant for you. You are just a traveler passing through and you should not linger. The sun sets as you leave the town. You drive off into the night for the next hundred miles of your journey. The sky is filled with more stars than you’ve ever seen in your entire life. And before long your mind begins to wander again.
DAYUM.
Wow. That was a very vivid way of describing that unsettling feeling of being alone on the road hundreds of miles away from civilization. And honestly that feeling would definitely explain why since I was a little kid I've always been so afraid of being stuck on one of those roads after the car breaks down.
That was a beautiful description of what I find the most appealing in road trips. I live in NM, where everything is at a distance, and I travel about 80 miles a day for work. I’m happier working in a rural village outside the city of ABQ, the traffic makes time about the same, but there is something about the travel, between worlds and communities, that I find alluring and I enjoy it.
I’m gonna cry. I need to get out of the city man. I can’t take it here anymore.
As a resident of the north western US, I must say, there are frequent pieces of nature dotted all over. Or rather, our towns and cities are dotted around nature.
Yes.
The way the green saturates everything here lends itself to more old world-style folklore
Yeah, I used to live in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, and there was the same thing of towns infrequently dotted about the countryside. As a kid I always wondered what secrets the woods had.
We drove a lot on family vacations and there is a lot of space in this country with towns so small that if you blink you'll miss them.
Yeah it’s a country of a few population centers in the middle of a lot of nature
Not exactly American but all of these stories remind me of the game "The Exit 8." A relatively small game about walking forward, entering the hall to exit 8, entering the hall to exit 8, entering the hall to exit 8, entering the... no that can't be right. It explains itself better than I ever could anyways
Alice Isn't Dead is my favorite spooky podcast and I'm so happy that it was mentioned first. That coffin episode is one of the most unsettling things I've heard.
I listened to The Dark Somnium's rendition of "The Left-Right Game" while road-tripping from North Dakota to the West Coast. Fantastic way to listen to it.
This is the coolest story of this genre.
Gosh I love this genre. Some other exceptional media I’d put into this category would be: Over the Garden Wall, The Electric State, Welcome to Night Vale, and Night in the Woods. Each has this unique take on the “Other America” genre. How they manage to capture that feeling of the personal and secluded ghost stories that often remain hidden to the world. The hauntings that few eyes get to see and fewer yet can understand.
“Somewhere lost in the clouded annals of history, Lies a place that few have seen. A mysterious place, called The Unknown. Where long-forgotten stories are revealed to those who travel through the wood.”
WTNV mentioned
14:05
the outro audio is in the middle of the video
spooookyyyy!
I suspect this was done to cover the reading of more....demonentizable content in the script
To me it felt creepy and for the rest of the video it felt like it was supposed to be over, but it just kept going I think this was a good choice to kind of put us in, that's ghost story, headspace, or maybe it was just me
@@dallindespain5082
Same here. I'm not certain it wasn't a deliberate choice. It certainly fits the theme, somehow.
POV: you made a _wrong_ turn in the left right game
Dude Alice Isn't Dead is so good. Every once in a while I listen to it again. If you haven't listened to it, highly recommend it. Though I prefer the podcast version to the audio book
Same here! The book version kinda lost that road trip feeling. I love that factory in the podcast, and it just got the passing mention in the book.
@@yumkas Season 1 of Alice Isnt Dead might just be me favourite story ever and the book was a massive disappointment. I havent even finish it. I wasnt also too keen on seasons 2 and 3 exactly because they have lost some of that roadtrip atmosphere, and focused on the central story.
As an actual Truck driver, I can tell you for a fact there IS a "Other" America!
In fact if you sit down sith ANY "Traveler of the Roads" be it a Trucker, hitchhikers, A Roma. Or hobo Drifter...they will ALL have multiple weird & unexplained Tales & stories.
I honestly didn't believe my Trainer 6 yrs ago when I started, now I got my own stories & encounters to tell 😅.
(Like the Dullahan i encounter on occasion on I-65 going North thru Tennessee toward Kentucky. )
Its always either near or next to Kentucky or in the Mojave desert when you find this other side of home... Hell you have pockets in Delaware where you can walk in some towns and just.... feel the presence of things that either tolerate our presence and allow us to build our ever growing pockets of civilization. At the same time sensing the growing irritation of those things, the exact feeling you get when you hear a dog softly growling, threatening to get louder and meaner the more someone else pokes and prods at it.
I’m sorry, the Dullahan you encounter? Please elaborate
you cant just drop the random dullahan and leave man
Wait come back what the hell do you mean the Dullahan encounter
@@Dr_Mortis_SCPwhat’s that
You have to figure, if other worlds do exist out there, our world is probably the horror story to one of them. In their world, they're telling scary stories about our world like it's a creepy, unsettling place that doesn't obey the laws they are used to. They're probably scaring each other with stories about things we consider completely normal
DoodLetMeGo recently made a short touching on this. What if the horrific monster some otherworldly denizens summoned to do their bidding was, in fact, an ordinary human?
That’s the basic premise of a lot of HFY stories.
As a resident of this strange world, I do find it rather horrific.
@@Vinemaple - What's the name of the short?
@@non1263 - What's HFY?
You have the OTHER Tale Foundry at 14:05
Having grown up in the rural southern US, there is something so forlorn and sad about the place. But also, something to honest. Behind the scheming politicians and amoral megacorps and duplicitous preachers, there are people who turn to them because they don’t know what else to do. Kentucky Route 0 speaks to me on a personal level.
Calling it honest is hilarious. "we don't have crime like in the cities" (actually just doesn't report it most of the time), not to mention all the hoaxes done for attention/tourism dollars. Honesty isn't the same thing as simplicity.
@@Vaeldarg Not in that sense, oh no. I’ll be the first to tell you that many southerners are liars and backstabbers. But just as many are scared and ignorant. I want to leave this place as much the next queer person, but I also hope that, maybe one day, they’ll be able to stop being afraid of change. I probably did misspeak, and honest probably wasn’t the correct word.
Tens of thousands of years ago, people first came to North America is groups, from a few different places, at a few different times. While they brought some mythology with them, they would forge new mythology about the world around them. When the Europeans invaded, many of these mythologies were either lost to time, or simply ignored by the non-native peoples. Much of the country has been forcibly changed. But there has always been the undercurrent that spawned the ancient mythologies. The tales of the forests you don't go into, or the plains with no end have morphed into the Backrooms, and Lost Highways. Country Music is rife with ghost stories across multiple generations, both of beneficial and harmful spirits. And people are still crafting these wonderful tales. And there are some truly weird things going on. Like those times when a sport scar shows up in the rear view mirror, getting ready to pass, then you look to your side-view mirror, and it's gone. Looking back to rear view mirror, it's gone. But there were no turnoffs. No crossroads. Just a long stretch of highway. No evidence of a crash behind you. Nothing in the news. And perhaps in an alternate reality, the driver of that car is telling about the time they passed this old pickup truck, but when they checked the rear view after passing, it wasn't there....
“Beneath the glamour of Hollywood, the slick technology of Silicon Valley… a different, quieter [California] lurks. It’s not easy to find. It’s hidden away because it is gritty and uncomfortable:” … Bakersfield.
I feel like I need to see it.
Love the channel! Shared you with an English professor friend and she shared with her students, thought you might like to know. Keep it up, little robot!
You scared the fuck out of me by 14:05 - legit thought I was dreaming.
I loved the nosleep posts about the national park ranger and his stories. This is something quite unique about america too, being so big that you have a very vast nature preserves where you can imagine all sorts of things happening. They are really cool and gave me creeps for days. If you see stairs in the woods just standing there by themselves never go up them, never look at them, never acknowledge them and try not to speak about them.
I was just about to post something about the stairs in the woods!
Don't climb them. Don't touch them. Don't even look at them.
0:08 I'd recognize Jubilation anywhere
Amazing comment ❤
What
@GoobersYT
The left right game. It's an amazing horror story
It is honestly sad how trapped we can be in vehicles and factories.
I LOVE GETTING LOCKED INSIDE MY OWN SMART CAR FOR SPEAKING AGAINST THE STATE 🌝🌝🌝💯🌝‼️🌝🗣️💯‼️‼️🌝
It really depends on where you live
Also some people can't afford houses so they literally live in their own car. 🚗🚗
As someone who drives to a factory every evening to spend 12 hours a night most nights a week, I feel that sadness quite a bit.
It's striking, at times, how I'm just some ethereal other to those passing by on the road, passing by a warehouse they'll never know the purpose of, full of people they'll never know like me and my coworkers. To them, we may as well be ghosts, haunting a building they'll never be inside, one of hundreds if not thousands of other buildings I see myself in my travels back and forth. It's a world of ghosts out there, ones that live, in passing, as we see them on the sidewalk, walk by in a store, but return to liminality as one of us crosses the threshold of observation. There are billions of them out there, those ghosts, haunting this planet, enacting things I can never see, operating systems I'll never know about, living lives I'll never understand. A sonderous, harrowing thought during one of those nights where it's my turn to play the ghost of others.
I live in the midwest and have to drive in a car to get to most places. Urban sprawl nightmare. Not exactly convenient, but it’s what we get for living in a car dependent capitalistic culture.
A game that manages to encapsulate this vibe perfectly was Pacific Drive.
It plays off of traditional american rural myths like bigfoot and government conspiracies, but places ypu with only an old 90s station wagon as your last line of survival - and means of escape, with the entire game centered around the horror of a place where everything constantly changes and yet remains the same as the dense woods of the Pacific Northwest always have been. You're a traveler trying to get out of there, forced to commute through dangerous landscapes and a landscape that has been irreparably and constantly changed for better or for worse.
I love the hidden/corrupt magic of America, specifically when located in the Midwest. It’s a fascinating type of story and world that I just keep dipping into again and again when I write. I think it’s because America’s melting pot type culture creates this mosaic of things that crash and meld with each other. Sometimes it ends up coming across as uncanny or eerie, or it completely corrupts into something malicious. The back ways and shadowy corners of America give the finest setting for horror and monsters to roam.
It's deeply compelling when done right, but I don't like how it can insinuate that all of "Flyover Country" is this kind of "shadowy corner of America."
The stories of serial killers going undiscovered for sometimes years or even decades probably doesn't help the idea of rural America not being as safe as claimed.
America is no longer the New World but it managed to keep the Mystique. The Magic in America is very unlike the Magic of Europe because it always feels very Old World, Primeval even. Theirs Monsters that aren’t simply nature but more like they’re woven into reality, alternate worlds are familiar yet wrong like an unnerving dream, nothing about the Magic of America feels like it’s separate from us.
America is no longer the New World but it managed to keep the Mystique. The Magic in America is very unlike the Magic of Europe because it always feels very Old World, Primeval even. Theirs Monsters that aren’t simply nature but more like they’re woven into reality, alternate worlds are familiar yet wrong like an unnerving dream, nothing about the Magic of America feels like it’s separate from us. It’s like these things have always been here and we just occasionally notice it. We don’t have fairies and goblins, we have beings that are twisted and contorted, things that almost look like us or like animals we know, we don’t have lands of fairies, we have dream like depictions of where we already live. We have monsters that change shape based on the skins they wear, monsters that are born from hunger, monsters that were created by hate, some made by desperation, deformed animals, alternate worlds that are just your home town that only ever feels slightly wrong, woods that feel alive and hungry, stretches of road that feel just as unnervingly alive.
@@VinemapleAgreed, and it’s telling he characterized it as a great setting for horror specifically. No magical journeys or heroic quests for the Heartland! Oh no, it’s all Slenderman and ghouls out there.
These stories are just so good. There’s just something about a story where something weird and unexplained happens and then it just moves on. There’s no magic to explain, no villain to defeat and no world to save. Something completely unexpected just happened. Like in Groundhogs day. It just happens.
NEW TALE FOUNDRY VID LET'S GOOOO
I hope the audio overlap was intentional, because it would kinda summarize the video perfectly. It’s a random bit of strangeness that otherwise would have gone unnoticed, had we not clicked on this video.
14:06 well that was eerie as heck
Gave me shivers 🤣
‘Other America’ is, in a way, and at its root, not just a haunting of America by the American Dream, it’s a fantastical lens taken to the unacknowledged but nonetheless impactful systemic mistakes and ideological pitfalls that led to the death of the American Dream in the first place.
Possibly the most haunting aspect of the concept, to me at least, is when the maybes and what-ifs and might-have-beens granted by the warped sort of hindsight give us little pondering glimpses of how it might have actually worked out… if only things had been different, and the mistakes made never were… only for a warped shriek of the state of things to come rumbling back in like that next car or truck on the highway.
Definitely. “The feeling of being haunted by the past is often an indication of unresolved historical trauma.” - Mark Fisher
I guess that’s why such stories don’t resonate with me personally. I’ve seen the American Dream come true too many times to believe it’s a lie.
That’s the thing about an open promise. You can find as many examples of it not “being kept” as there are grains of sand on a beach. But you only need one to prove it’s at least not a total lie or delusion. Let alone how many times I’ve seen it done with different families including my own.
@@ThePa1riot your nation, if it exists, salutes you
At 14:00 you have an audio error
I have seen this Other America, it's right down the street to my house. I live on the Northeast side of America, so many times, I see old historic buildings next to fancy new clean-white houses. Along with this, the town I'm in is surrounded by farmland and expressways, and just down the street from my house is a forest with dirt roads going to houses that lie inside them, and even an empty field with a fence surrounding it. Down another street is the expressway to get to your local Walmart or ShopRite. Down another street, you'd see a great big field with a house in the middle. It's a strange experience to see all of these things when walking down the street, but at the same time, I can't help but feel mystified when I go down near the train tracks and see an empty stone building with broken windows next to an up and running factory, or a seemingly abandoned construction site in the middle of the woods. I feel like that sense of "something was supposed to start here, but it never did" gives this Other America it's feeling. It's like everything here is abandoned, even if it's lived in
Loved that reference to Route 0. The atmosphere is very rooted in Americana: ranches, static, bears. You've got to walk it by yourself, so I'll stop there. I love how modern Americana dark fiction goes back to looping. Thinking about the same thing over and over, while it changes with or without you.
You should look into "Welcome to Night Vale". It's another podcast, and it has many similarities and almost certainly touches upon the American Otherworld concept. But there's more to it than that. A way of writing horror and humor that's very unique, yet still has hints of the styles that form it. It plays with concepts of the supernatural and preternatural... and with how real people and communities might live their lives around those concepts realized. Personally, I find the deadpan hyperbolic surreal humor to be both highly amusing and deeply soothing somehow.
What's with the audio about 14:30? A "goodbye" in the middle?
Probably just an overseen sound part while editing
Editing error most likely
@R0dolphus Retorical. The statement was stated to point out the issue. Not to ask the actual question.
My guess would be censoring to make it youtube friendly or spoilers. It starts with explaining a company buying people who can't pay their tab...
@alexschubert9768 Retorical, again. It wasn't an actual question. It was to point out there was an issue with editing.
Ǫ̷̝̝̦̜͂̾̾̃̈́̔͐͐̚T̴̛̛͇̳̣̝̖͙̂̿̌́̊̏͜H̸̨̨̙̼̮̝̩̘̞͕̥͎̻͈̥̑̃̆̓̀͑͛̔̔̂͝E̴͔͛̈́R̶̨͚͉̜̭̼̟̜̭̬̱̻̖͓̩̭̂͌͜ I never thought that you could create such art with your keyboard.
What my keyboard
@@AaravBaranwal any keyboard how do you even do this??
How?
unicode lets you do some wild stuff. google "zalgo text generator"
ḵ̸̢̫̝͉̭̀̋̌̓̒̒͜͠ͅe̵̮̺̗̖̔͆̃̈́ȩ̴̢̥̱͉̞̇̌̂̐͗̕͜͝ͅp̷̦̱̣̞̅ ̸͔̀͝ͅȋ̸̢̡͓͔̫̰͘t̵͉̯͚̣͖͆̃͜ ̸͉̻̬̼̙͓͈̝͗̔w̷̖͎̙̻̻̱͗̈́ȩ̷͇̼̘̦̿̋ï̴̪̓̚r̵͖̮̿̃̀̇̿̑͊d̵̡̮̄͑
A note from the translation feature: How does one ǫ their keyboard?
I recognized the first line of this video as Alice Isn't Dead almost instantly, that episode of the podcast was always my favorite and has haunted me for years
It's not just the sense of being trapped that makes the American otherworld so uncomfortable, it's also the people in it that seem to be desperately clinging to the promise of the American Dream, even though they all know it's a long broken promise. They go about they're lives like nothing's wrong, willfully ignorant of the at times nightmaresh world they're trapped in.
The travelers, for lack of a better term, can feel something's wrong but don't really wanna confront it so they just drift further and further into the otherworld.
I guess that’s why such stories don’t resonate with me personally. I’ve seen the American Dream come true too many times to believe it’s a lie.
That’s the thing about an open promise. You can find as many examples of it not “being kept” as there are grains of sand on a beach. But you only need one to prove it’s at least not a total lie or delusion. Let alone how many times I’ve seen it done with different families including my own.
I wish you guys would talk about the Magnus Archives! Creepy stuff, amazing plots hidden within plots, eldritch entities, paranoid/murdered archivists, body snatching, falling through an endless sky, etc.! You guys would *absolutely* love it!
My partner and I are listening to that EXACT podcast. Currently on Season 2!
@@schismannihilator4085 it's SOOOO good (i'm only up to MAG 101, so no spoilers beyond 😁), what's your favorite ep so far ?
@@vishanteeRelevant to the overarching plot "Page Turner" & "First Aid."
Gerard Keay is really interesting. Kid growing up in an occult-rich environment that he understands is NOT doing him, or anyone, any good, and he kinda discretely crusading against the coming of whatever it is these weird cultists are trying to call forth.
(As far as I know, of course, as I could be wrong).
Makes me think of people descended from lines of abuse (physical, psychological, sexual, substance, etc.) and going, "The cycle ends here."
I love the left right game so damn much. I usually listen to dark somniums narration every night to put me to sleep.
I once took a wrong turn going to a local tourist attraction, and ended up going through a rock quarry, a forest, and several other strangely wild-feeling places before returning to the highway, which, despite being to the correct side of, I somehow managed to cross an uneven number of times in a wide circle before, on the fourth loop, my destination showed up in a place it wasn't before.
Thank you for putting me on to the left right game. Just finished the 6 hour audio video. What an experience.
As always... Enchanting. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I'm a Kentucky native. Ive always lived within a mile of a US Interstate. I-71 in Kentucky, I-65 in Indiana, I-15 in Nevada and I-95 in Maryland. I've driven across the United States by car around 6 times. The last time I drove my family from San Diego to Baltimore. In every place there is a lot that is broken and uncomfortable, but there is so much that is beautiful too. I miss all of my old homes. I get lost on Google Maps sometimes looking at old familiar places, remembing all the good people and their stories. This is a great video, and i would be lying if i said it didn't stir something in me about "The Other" America I've had the privilege to experience. And... I'm looking forward to playing Kentucky Route 0.
Unless you are an Indian aka an actual native American you are not native to any place in North America.
When I was younger, a cop came to our door and asked for an address, the number right above ours, that house didn’t exist, we later looked that address up and the satellite map put a marker in the center of the road in front of our house… that was always rly weird to me
Happens, people give false addresses. Sometimes medians have addresses.
Something this odd is the kind of video I’ve been craving for the past week
one small correction, the US wasnt built for cars, at least not for the most part, it was bulldozed for the car though, you can see the before and after pics and its honestly kinda haunting
America was built and is still built around railroads. Commerce is the backbone of civilization. Overcrowded hives of human bugs who refuse to establish new hives just don't see the millions of miles of railroads barely out of their sight.
This mystical side of Americana is something I’ve been obsessed with since childhood. Does it even exist? If it does, where do I find it? Why are our heroes explorers and builders and not swordsmen and dragon slayers?
These questions and more have really haunted me as a man who loves fantasy. Worlds of magic and knights and great evils to defeat.
because we brought our monsters with us.
Everywhere if you keep an open mind and an eye open.
Dark Americana ( or American gothic) has to be my new favorite obsession what with family road trips being so easy to relate to, being how ingrained into the culture driving is
There should probably be a Jumpscare suburban horror isekai story based on being transported via an old television (tv) to an otherworld mirroring earth. just an idea, take it or leave it...loosely based on being interrupted while watching a show on the old TV by the end credits of the show before being isekaied..
This episode reminded me precisely why I love this channel so much. Always exposes me to the most interesting, haunting stories imaginable. Thank you, Tale Foundry.
I truly do think that otherworldly strangeness is inherent to America as a country. Things like Mothman, Jack Parsons rituals, Sightings and the encounters with The Men In Black all echo a single feeling. The feeling that we’re in a place that was already inhabited and what was once here isn’t content with being forgotten.
Nice touch with the audio glitch. Very on brand.
I've had some unusual jobs and traveled a great deal. I have one story in mind today. It was 3 or 4 in the morning at an empty little dinner in a blizzard, didn't see any headlights before the front bell rang. In walks a large man in jeans and a leather jacket. His long dark hair and beard are frozen. Not a word about the storm just sits at the bar. Waitress gets his order then he just quietly waits. Gets his food (no coffee) and eats quickly like he has some where to be. When no one's looking the front bell rings again. The waitress goes to greet a new customer but no one's there. The ice guys gone. At his spot on the bar there's $40. Out side there are no new tire marks just the ones from when the waitress came in, and no footprints past the salted sidewalk.
Now could the guy have walked from the road to the sidewalk fallowing the tire tracks, yes. Could he have made it back the same way and out of sight between the bell and the waitress looking out side, maybe.
The real questions are how long was he out there for his hair to freeze, and where was he in a hurry to get to on foot.
Wow you absolutely saw something! Looks like he had to roll before the Daybreak and that second Bell
For those who couldn't understand the overlaid audio at 14:05 and want to, I think it said: and uses them as "ghostly" (*something I didn't catch*) "worker slaves. What happens to the bodies you ask? Well, they've got to make their signature whiskey somehow!"
One of the best readings of the Left Right Game is on Creep Cast with Wendigoon and Papa Meat.
It's great if you like constant interruptions and commentary on the story as it goes, which I certainly do, the second time. There's other readings that are great and just have the story by itself.
Heck yes!!! I listened to this podcast story 5 times over the last decade! I'm so excited that Tale Foundry is covering it!!
This video has managed to _perfectly_ encapsulate my feelings on this subject. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to more clearly see the sort of beauty in the parts of this modern life most see as “boring”, I guess, and this video has actually helped me begin to articulate why.
Honestly, this sort of “American otherworld” is a _huge_ part of why I love Percy Jackson. The magic isn’t only found in the deep, out-of-the-way wilderness, or in ancient ruins, or a literal other dimension. I mean, yes, it’s there, too, but Percy Jackson focuses on the magic hiding in the everyday parts of the modern world. The hotel and casino on the Vegas strip that’s actually a magical time-trap designed to make you never want to leave, the secret 600th floor of the Empire State Building that takes you to Olympus, the fact that _Hermes invented the Internet,_ the various historical figures that were actually demigods, the demigods and monsters still secretly living among mortals, I could go on and on. I feel like it’s the best kind of “secret magic world” setting.
I knew Alice Isn't Dead would be mentioned as soon as I saw the title. Absolutely wonderful podcast and I would recommend.
so glad to see people still talk about Kentucky Route Zero. That game is magic and Im so glad it exists
2:59 Oh, I Love that fictioncast!!
You and the smooth ad rolls! You got me again! 😳
There's something romantic about an American road trip. Passing so many people who you'll never meet with their own fully fleshed out lives. So many personal struggles. I love Alice Isn't Dead.
Stephen King novels also evoke the American other world. Even when they're set in fictional places, they feel American.
Clever transition to the ad at the end. I also really liked the audio being overlayed.
If I had a nickel for every female protagonist in a ‘Another America’ story named Alice, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it’s happened twice
Isn't the protagonist technically Kiesha? She's just looking for Alice
Whats the other one?
@@rosiered6712Alice Isnt Dead by Night Vale Presents! It’s a great podcast :)
@@rosiered6712 its Alice from left right game i think
I would bet anything that it's an Alice in Wonderland reference in both cases
learning is not actually why im here, for the most part its your adorable intro, the little song gives me life i swear
I should really give Alice isn't Dead another listen
The left right game is my favorite story of all time. I was super excited that you talked about it.
Beware the darkened roads, they lead everywhere
Bruh. I’m playing the long drive, and when you mention the left right thing THE ROAD STARTS ZIG ZAGGING
14:02 wh,what was th that °o°
Probably an audio editing issue, a section of an outro played over the intended parts
I thought it was just my TH-cam app screwing up, sort of relieved to see it’s not just me.
Ooo, new emoticon I've never seen!
I'm so thankful that my parents/grandparents decided to raise our family in a small town way outside the bigger cities. My childhood was full of playing in the woods and being in nature. As a teen it got boring but as an adult now with children grown of my own, I am back to thankful. We are surrounded by pretty good people with not much violence at all to speak of. Going through cities today makes me anxious, more so than ever just because of the level of violence today in these places. To me, the city is more spooky than the country any day!
Just started playing the Left Right Game while listening to this, currently at 14:01. Sure hope I took the correct turn there as I commented this.
The opening part immediately made me think of Tales From The Gas Station. Really good video, thank you for digging into these topics.
I think it is the idea you a trapped in an abusive relationship with your own country you have no hopes of escaping only to make due with what you have
"If you don't like it, then leave." Yeah, buddy, you know how much you need in pocket to move countries?
For the majority of its citizens, the United States is actually a third world country.
@@abydosianchulac2especially when many struggle to have enough coin to survive.
@@abydosianchulac2 Not to mention there own skeletons in thier closets
Same shit just different shade of brown
America's biggest sin is the fact they pretend that they are any different
You might as well be saying “it’s too haaaaard!” Is the suffering of working your way towards a move worse than simply living in the US? If no, then get to work and I wish you the best. If yes, then stop complaining and ESPECIALLY don’t try to ruin or change things that everyone else can tolerate or even likes. Of course there is nuance to each individual scenario, but if you’re going to make the blanket statement about an entire country, don’t bash me for making a blanket statement on how to get away from it. If third worlders can leave behind possessions, family, and risk their lives to leave, and living in the US is SOOOO intolerable, then just find a way.
Hey there! Thank you for introducing me to Alice isn't dead. This vid got me curious to hear what the series is about. Now I'm on it's third season and it's a phenomenal series, I can't wait to finish it. Again, thanks.
The SCP Foundation would like to talk to Keisha.
Your voice is soooo calming.
14:04 Is there something I am missing here? I've read through the comments and keep seeing something about some audio bug or glitch at this time stamp.
The only thing I hear that seems off is the narrator taking a larger pause in this line "...uses them as ... ghostly ... office worker slaves".
The ad placement was super good in this episode 😆
something about this reminds me of welcome to nightvale
i think alice isn't dead is made by the same ppl as night vale so that makes sense
@@lights-at-night-art oh cool! i'll definitely have to check it out. there's a void in my podcast lineup now that i've caught up to magnus archives
Alice isn't dead is a night Vale book!
Same production company and Joseph Fink worked on both!
can we give a round of applause for this man giving straight theses on life for a youtube channel 👏👏👏
14:05 LMAO
I grew up with joining my stepdad and mom on trips up and down this side of the Rockies making deliveries, and honestly, I remember hearing stories late at night while he and my mom used the CB radio to talk to the other drivers. One that sticks out is the stereotypical story of the woman standing on the side of the road - only this time there were multiple witnesses because my dad's track was part of a small convoy of 4 trucks, and every person in each of the trucks saw the same woman, and saw her just poof out of existence. There was also a full moon, and nothing else for miles in all directions; just flat empty terrain. Still gives me shivers just thinking about it.
this reminded me of the musical "Assassins" where we follow that assassins (successful or not) of the U.S. presidents and see America through their eyes
I recently left home to go to university (I live in the U.S.) and I don’t come from a big city or anything (suburbs i guess you could call it?) but the town my university is in is a really small town. It has a population of 3,000 people (not including college students) it’s so strange to walk in the town or talk to people who live here. It has a street called Main Street and it looks like a tourist town waay past its prime. A lot of the buildings on broken or boarded up. There are murals painted on some buildings that are super faded and cracked. My favorite is this little book store full of the most interesting books! They have a naturalist section which has all sorts of field guides and identifier books. They have supplies for writing and sending letters different kinds of envelopes and stamps. I always find the strangest thought provoking stories there. The whole place as kind of a quiet respect to it. Like everyone’s waiting and watching for something to happen. It’s definitely a ghost town.
0:15 Left Right Game?
Get back in the car, bristol.
She's right behind me isn't it
I’m always so glad this channel exists. Teaching so much, exploring so many ideas, fuelling creativity in the best possible way.
Tale foundry is astounding.
omg, i love alice isn’t dead